The benefits of aerobic exercise - strengthen your heart and strip off body fat!

When I refer to exercise I do not always mean formal exercises in a gym or health club setting. I am referring to any activity that gets you moving and gets you to push your body outside of its usual sedentary or relaxed state. This is the principle known as OVERLOAD. You overload a muscle when you encourage it to work harder than usual and this also applies to your heart muscle!

I am not about to bore you with all the reasons why you should exercise, but I am confident that you are reading this because you want to improve or maintain your health. Health and vitality begins with your ability and willingness to use and improve your physical body.

I know that there will still be individuals reading this, convincing themselves that they don't have time to exercise, or don't really feel they need to, but this is probably because a part of the brain is trying to sabotage their efforts to improve their health! This is the same part of the brain that tells you that your healthy eating plan can wait until Monday, or that one more cake wont make any difference! We all have coping strategies of some sort and look to justify choices we make, even though we know through standard logic that what we are saying to ourselves isn't necessarily true! The trick is to learn to recognise when you are making excuses and to learn to not listen to the voice of negativity! This is a hugely important part of making positive changes in any area of your life.

So I will just describe 3 areas to incorporate into your own personal exercise plan. You must consider your cardiovascular exercise (elevating your heart rate), muscular exercise (strengthening and toning your muscles) and flexibility exercises (improving your posture and range of motion around your joints). Each of these areas are equally important and should be included in your exercise regime.

Cardiovascular Exercise

In this section I will be focusing on cardiovascular exercise. Cardiovascular exercise is beneficial for a number of reasons: Firstly, it improves the efficiency of your heart and lungs and enables your body to uptake and pump greater quantities of oxygen. If your body is able to absorb and circulate more oxygen then you are less likely to get out of breath as quickly. You will be able to sustain physical activity for longer durations and your heart and lungs will generally be healthier. This is described as cardiovascular fitness.

If we overlook the obvious then there are other advantages to exercising at greater intensities. If we use a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is too easy and 10 is almost impossible then you should aim to exercise at a minimum of 7. At 7 it will be hard and you should sweat, but you should be able to sustain the level of difficulty for a minimum of 20 minutes. When you exercise at this level, changes begin to happen in your body. Your body lays down more mitochondria in the muscles and the mitochondria are responsible for processing oxygen. To cut a long story short, your body will only burn fat in the presence of oxygen, so the greater your body's ability to process oxygen, the greater your capability to burn fat!

There is another school of thought that suggests you should exercise at a difficulty of 6 out of 10, as this is the 'fat burning zone'. Let me just clarify this: you DO NOT burn more fat working at an intensity of 6 out of 10 than you do at an intensity of 7 out of 10! PERIOD! However, if you cannot sustain a minimum of 20 minutes at higher intensity then you should reduce your intensity to achieve the duration. In my opinion this is the only time you should exercise at a lower intensity (other than warm ups and cool downs). Working at 6 out of 10 will NOT encourage your body to adapt and become a fat burning machine!

That said, only work up to higher intensities as your health develops. You should be in this for the long haul, so don't over-train in the first couple of days! Start with what you are capable of doing and aim to progress over time. Also, seek support from your physician if you have any health conditions or concerns.

In my next article, I will be outlining a strategy for determining and improving your cardiovascular exercise and fitness. This will provide a workable guide for any person who is ready to begin exercising TODAY, or who has been exercising and wishes to improve further.

Please note that when you exercise your body consumes more oxygen and as a result more free radicals are produced within your body. Free radicals are volatile particles, which attack and damage healthy cells in a process called oxidation (or free-radical damage). It is widely believed that we need to ensure that we consume sufficient quantities of antioxidants (i.e. vitamins) to neutralise free radicals and safeguard our bodies from degenerative diseases.

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