What is physically

Aim for 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per day. Incorporate strength training and stretching into your exercise routine 5. Limit saturated fats, but consider including more unsaturated fatty acids found in foods such as chia seeds, avocados, and salmon 6. Avoid consuming trans fats 6. In general, make sure to eat a variety of whole foods to get the most out of every meal 7. You must be logged in to post a comment. Pingback: Physical Wellness — Amy Weyer.

If you have not been physically active in a while, you may be wondering how to get started again. Find more tips here to get started with physical activity for a healthy weight. Learn more about what works and how physical activity can improve your health.

Some benefits of physical activity on brain health pdf icon [PDF Benefits include improved thinking or cognition for children 6 to 13 years of age and reduced short-term feelings of anxiety for adults. Regular physical activity can help keep your thinking, learning, and judgment skills sharp as you age. It can also reduce your risk of depression and anxiety and help you sleep better. Learn more about the immediate benefits pdf icon [PDF Looking to get to or stay at a healthy weight?

Both diet and physical activity play a critical role in maintaining a healthy body weight, losing excess body weight, or maintaining successful weight loss. You gain weight when you consume more calories through eating and drinking than the amount of calories you burn, including those burned during physical activity. When it comes to weight management, people vary greatly in how much physical activity they need.

You may need to be more active than others to reach or maintain a healthy weight. Adults who sit less and do any amount of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity gain some health benefits.

To maintain your weight: Work your way up to minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity for example, 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. Strong scientific evidence shows that physical activity can help you maintain your weight over time. However, the exact amount of physical activity needed to do this is not clear since it varies greatly from person to person. Getting to and staying at a healthy weight requires both regular physical activity and a healthy eating plan.

For more information about nutrition, physical activity, and weight loss, visit Healthy Weight. Heart disease and stroke are two of the leading causes of death in the United States. Following the recommendations and getting at least minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity can put you at a lower risk for these diseases.

You can reduce your risk even further with more physical activity. Regular physical activity can also lower your blood pressure and improve your cholesterol levels. Regular physical activity can reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is some combination of too much fat around the waist, high blood pressure, low High Density Lipoproteins HDL cholesterol, high triglycerides, or high blood sugar.

People start to see benefits at levels of physical activity below the recommended minutes a week. Additional amounts of physical activity seem to lower risk even more. At the same time, additional small arteries grow within muscle tissue so that they can deliver blood to working muscles more effectively when needed. However, recent research suggests that different types of activity change the heart in subtly different ways.

The hearts of endurance athletes show expanded left and right ventricles, whereas those of strength athletes show thickening of the heart wall, particularly the left ventricle.

Although the heart steadily strengthens over time, the respiratory system does not adjust to the same degree. Lung size does not change, but the lungs do use oxygen more effectively. In general, exercise encourages the body to become more efficient at taking on, distributing, and using oxygen. Over time, this improvement increases endurance and overall health. Cardiorespiratory fitness can help reduce the risk of conditions including:.

There are a number of ways to measure muscular strength. Generally, lifting a set weight in a prescribed position and comparing the results against any given population is the best way. In general, if a person works their muscles consistently and regularly, they will increase in strength. There are various ways of putting the muscles through rigorous activity, but anything that works a muscle until it is tired will increase muscle strength over time. Muscles consist of elongated muscle cells.

Each muscle cell contains contractile proteins, called actin and myosin, that give the muscle its strength.

These fibers contract together, producing the so-called power stroke. The total force depends on the number of these units contracting in unison. Scientists do not fully understand the exact mechanism of muscle building, but the general principles are well known. Training causes the muscle cells to expand, and there is an increase in actin and myosin production. Also, in untrained muscles, fibers tend to fire in an asynchronous manner. In other words, they do not fire in unison. As a person trains them, however, they learn to fire together as one, thereby increasing maximum power output.

Fitness can also include muscular endurance, which is the ability of a muscle to continue exerting force without tiring. As mentioned above, strength training builds bigger muscles.

Endurance training, on the other hand, does not necessarily generate muscles of a larger size. This is because the body focuses more on the cardiovascular system, ensuring that the muscles receive the oxygenated blood they need to keep functioning. Another important change in muscles that people specifically train for endurance concerns the different types of muscle tissue: fast twitch and slow twitch fibers. Fast twitch fibers contract quickly but get tired quickly.