We all know that exercise benefits mental, physical, and emotional health. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, most healthy adults should aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise each week (swimming, running, walking, rowing, cycling, etc.), along with at least two days of resistance training.
If training is more on the vigorous end of the scale, 75 minutes a week is the goal.
Benefits of Exercise
Once you’ve nailed down an exercise program tailored to you and your fitness goals, you’ll need to implement it! While this can be challenging at first (especially if the routine is new to you), you’ll soon begin to reap the benefits of working out faster than you’d think.
Some of the more obvious benefits of exercise include increasing muscle mass, decreasing body fat and overall body composition, improving cardiovascular health, improving mood and reducing stress levels, and even improving sleep quality.
Metabolic Health
Aside from these benefits, multiple things are happening within the body that we can’t really see – but they’re significant. For example, something else to consider when exercising is the improvement of your metabolic health.
According to Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders, your metabolic health is a combination of factors such as cholesterol, blood pressure, blood glucose levels, triglycerides, and waist circumference. Data collected from 2009 through 2016 from over 8700 men and women noted that approximately one in eight adults had optimal health levels of those five factors listed above without using medicine to get them to those optimal levels.
For example, without pharmaceutical intervention, only one out of eight had excellent blood pressure, blood glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides, and a healthy waist circumference.
While this was a smaller sample study compared to the number of adults currently in the US, it still sheds light on just how much of an impact exercise has on these health factors. Thankfully, working out plays a huge role in improving these markers for health (even though the study didn’t consider lifestyle issues such as sleep quality, smoking status, dietary issues, etc.).
These issues might not seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but when combined can lead someone down the path of developing chronic conditions or diseases.
Aside from incorporating exercise into your daily routine, consuming a whole, nutrient-dense diet can also help to improve these health factors. If you’re unsure what your metabolic health looks like – especially if you aren’t currently working out – speak with your doctor.
A simple physical and routine lab work can help shed light on your overall health, and your physician can help get you on track to formulating a workout plan that works for you and your fitness goals!
