American Medical Association Family Medical Guide - American Medical Association [8]
• Choose an exercise you enjoy.
• Schedule time for exercise.
• Find a workout buddy or take an exercise class.
• Vary your activities to avoid boredom.
• Fight inertia by remembering how good exercise makes you feel.
If you don’t want to join a health club or can’t make the time for a long workout several times a week, try to incorporate exercise into your daily life in the following ways to accumulate 30 to 60 minutes of exercise every day:
• Climb up and down several flights of stairs at work once or twice a day.
• Take a brisk walk after dinner.
• Walk the dog.
• Pull your children around the neighborhood in a wagon or sled.
• Go to the local mall and walk.
• Park in a parking space farther from the store or office and walk to the building.
• Carry or push a golf bag instead of using a golf cart.
• Wash and wax the car.
• Do yard work.
• Clean the house.
• Jump rope.
• Mow the lawn with a hand mower.
• Lift hand weights, or do lunges, push-ups, and jumping jacks while you watch TV.
• On the weekends, organize a family bike ride, hike, or ball game. Go swimming, ice skating, or in-line skating together. Go dancing.
Making time for exercise
It’s easier to fit exercise into your busy schedule if you make it part of your daily routine. Try walking up and down several flights of stairs at work every day. It takes only a few minutes and it strengthens your heart, lungs, and bones.
Three Types of Exercise
Three different types of exercise—aerobic, flexibility, and strengthening—help you achieve different kinds of physical fitness. Aerobic exercise (such as walking, jogging, and cycling) increases your heart rate to deliver more oxygen to your muscles. Strengthening exercises (such as lifting weights and doing push-ups) build muscle and bone to increase strength. Flexibility exercises (such as stretching or yoga) improve your ability to move your joints through their full range of motion. Including all three types of activity in your exercise regimen will help you reach a high overall level of fitness that can improve your health and reduce your risk of several of the most common chronic diseases, including heart disease and diabetes.
Choosing activities you enjoy will help you stay with your exercise program. Variety is the key, so don’t limit yourself to one activity. Jog one day and swim or bike the next. Work out with weights one day and use a stair-climbing machine the next day. Vary your stretching exercises as well. Not only will you maintain your enthusiasm for exercising, you will also be less likely to get injured.
Aerobic exercise
Aerobic exercise includes any activity that uses the large muscles, such as those in the legs, in repetitive motion that can be sustained over a long period. Examples of aerobic activity include walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, skating, cross-country skiing, and stair climbing. Aerobic exercise causes your heart and lungs to work more efficiently as they supply more and more oxygen-rich blood to your working muscles. Aerobic exercise builds endurance and provides a number of other important health benefits, including:
• Improved heart and lung function
• Reduced heart rate
• Lower blood pressure
• Higher blood levels of HDL (good) cholesterol
• Reduced body fat
• Improved weight control
• Increased bone strength
• Improved sleep
Aerobic exercise changes your body composition by lowering your body’s percentage of fat and increasing its percentage of muscle, giving you a toned, fitter body. Aerobic exercise also protects against several of the most common chronic health problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, and some cancers.
If you have been inactive, start your aerobic exercise program with walking. Walking is an excellent aerobic activity that is low impact (and therefore safe for your joints), builds cardiovascular