Exercise Helps to Manage Weight
Posted on September 15, 2014
Hi there! This week I am going to talk to you about staying active. I kept telling my family I was going to find time to exercise regularly. Finally one day my daughter looked at me and said, “Mom, you have been telling me that for 5 years!!” So, two months ago I joined a health club and I feel great! Did you know that exercise can improve your life? It’s true. Staying physically active helps you to not only feel better, but actually gives you more energy, and according to the Mayo Clinic, may even help you live longer!
It doesn’t matter what your age, gender or level of physical actively is – the benefits will have a positive and long lasting impact on your overall health.
Still not convinced? Here are five ways that physical activity can benefit you:
- Exercise helps to manage weight – whether you want to maintain your weight or lose weight, exercise is the key.
- Physical activity helps decrease your chances of getting a chronic health condition by boosting your good cholesterol, HDL, and decreasing your triglycerides.
- Exercise improves your mood! If you need an emotional lift or if you’ve experienced a stressful day, exercise can help combat your stress and enhance your mood.
- Exercise also boosts your energy level. Regular activity improves muscle strength and physical endurance.
- Exercise promotes better sleep. If you have a hard time falling asleep or staying asleep exercise may just be the “cure” for you!
To get started find an activity you enjoy; walking, gardening, yard work, bicycling, swimming, playing kickball with your kids, taking a yoga class! Whatever it is, just get started. If you haven’t been active, begin slowly with just 10 minutes each day. Once you feel that you can do a little more, add 5 minutes each week until you build up to 30 minutes. If you don’t have 30 minutes all at one time, break it up throughout the day. You will still achieve the positive benefits of physical activity.
Whether you want to lose weight or maintain your weight, adding physical activity to your day will help you reach your goal. Each time you engage in physical activity your body burns calories. The more intense the activity the more calories you will burn. For example, a 155 pound person will burn approximately 165 calories walking at a moderate pace (4 miles/hour) for 30 minutes. (This is equivalent to the calories in 3 Oreo cookies.) That same person, jogging (5 miles/hour) for 30 minutes will burn approximately 300 calories.
For a list of activities and the approximate calories that you would burn, you can try the WebMD Fitness and Exercise Calorie Calculator at:
http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool-fitness-calorie-counter.
Keep in mind that physical activity includes more than just exercise; house cleaning, washing the car, gardening, mowing the lawn, playing basketball or soccer with your kids, and much more all increase your caloric output.
If you are trying to lose weight, you need to figure out your basal metabolic rate; basically the number of calories that you need each day to maintain your weight. You can input all of this information on the health status website at www.healthstatus.com.
To lose one pound in a week you need to burn 3500 calories. That is approximately 500 calories per day. You can do this by cutting back by 250 calorie food intake (good-bye cookies) and increasing your physical activity level to burn an additional 250 calories.
Be sure to set a realistic weight loss goal and know that to sustain your weight loss it is best to make this your new lifestyle as opposed to a temporary program to get back into those pants or that dress!
There are a number of great tools and apps that you can download your smart devices for free or a minimal charge to help you track your nutritional intake and activity output. Two of my favorites are MyFitnessPal.com and WebMD’s Food and Fitness Planner (webmd.com).
If you are an HNE member, you have access to HNE’s Healthy Directions Member Wellness Program. The Healthy Directions program offers all members, aged 18 and older, a free online health portal. The portal is powered by WebMD and offers an online health assessment, a health record, wellness library, videos, interactive health coaching and much more. Members who complete the health assessment and get their biometric screenings get entered into a monthly and year-end raffle. Biometric screenings provide measurements of your health that can help you work toward maintaining or improving your health status.
To learn more about Healthy Directions:
• First time users visit webmdhealth.com/hne and click on register
• Returning users visit webmdhealth.com/hne and log in to begin
Join me tomorrow when I talk about how regular exercise can decrease your risk of a chronic health condition.
Take my weekly quiz on staying active to see how much you have learned today!!
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