Selena Deleon – THE WORKOUT THE HEALTHY Living System is inter-connected. Achieving an optimal quality of life is a complete method of loving yourself and caring for your body, which incorporates a healthy diet, adequate rest and water, exercise, proper stress management and regular check-ups. One aspect of fitness cannot work without all of the others. Exercise alone is just not enough! Make it a combined effort to feel really good.
Exercise stimulates a positive response for your body and mind. Rest allows it! Inadequate rest adds to stress levels, and vice versa, when we're under stress, sleep is the first thing to go. Not getting enough rest decreases your energy and weakens your immune system. Exercise helps insomnia, making you more tired at bedtime and improving the quality of your sleep. It seems that you always get slammed with some physical problem when you are run down. You cannot workout properly if you have not had sufficient rest, they are inter-connected and your body depends on them both.
DON'T LET STRESS MAKE YOU SICK!
Exercise also helps to reduce stress levels and is widely recommended to treat depression and mood swings. Taking one hour out of your day to exercise reduces stress and helps to clear your head. Plenty of studies have found that exercise for anything from a few minutes to a few hours, can trigger happiness, tranquility, euphoria and creativity. When you exercise the brain produces an excess of what are known as endorphins. These are substances which are chemically related to morphine. The idea was that exercise produced a "natural high", and it was this effect which resulted in the good mood.
Vigorous exercise, even for short periods, causes blood endorphin levels to rise far above their normal levels for several hours, although no-one knows why this happens. But, is this what causes the exercise high? Two theories are the "mastery" hypothesis and the "distraction" hypothesis. In the "mastery" hypothesis the idea is that exercise enhances moods by giving you a sense of achievement. The "distraction" hypothesis suggests that exercise takes your mind off of daily stresses. For one hour, you concentrate only on your body, block out everything around you and centre yourself. What could be better for your mental health? By the end of it, you feel relaxed and your muscles are less tense, as is your mind and body.
Food is our fuel, our energy. Without it, we collapse and fall over. It keeps our body functioning and it fuels our work and recreation. We need fuel to expend energy during exercise so that we can reap all of its many benefits. Diet and exercise depend on one another. If we consume more energy than we expend, our body converts the excess into fat and dumps it in various locations around our body: e.g. our hips, thighs, tummy etc.
All food contains energy (calories). However not all foods are equally fattening or equally healthy. For example:
Some foods contain more than twice the calories of others.
Some foods make digestion more difficult.
Some foods contain little, if any, nutrition.
Some foods actually reduce the amount of nutrition in our bodies.
Some foods are associated with serious diseases like heart disease and cancer.
In other words, it's not how much food we eat: it's the type of food we eat, that counts! To put it simply - we should follow a sensible, balanced diet which is inter-related to our energy levels, exercise output and general well-being.
Water is essential to life. Water aids in digestion and helps to boost your metabolism. Proper hydration promotes good health. In order for our body to get the nutritional value from our foods and supplements we must consume plenty of good water. Our energy level is greatly affected by the amount of water we drink.
All of the aspects to healthy living are all inter-connected; when one is lacking all other functions suffer. Train sensibly and safely and you will be doing all that is necessary to see and feel the results that you are seeking.
Selena DeLeon is a fitness expert.
