IS our DNA determining our Physcial Health and Destiny?
I read an article about set of male twins who had the same food preferences. The only difference was that one set of twins stopped exercising in early adulthood. Within three years of becoming sedentary the non-exercising twins began to develop precursors to diabetes, had more fat and less muscular endurance. In addition to these signs the more sedentary twins also had less grey matter in the brain regions responsible for motor control and coordination.
This was a small study but proved the importance of physical activity. When we’re busy with our duties of survival, fitness can become an abstract concept. The way to work around that is to have a goal-oriented approach. The first goal is simply to move. Don’t worry about a strenuous exercise routine or even signing up for a gym membership. If you mainly need more energy, do any kind of exercise three to four times a week. Walk, turn on the music channel on your TV and dance for 15 minutes. Better yet, grab a friend or a partner and dance for an hour. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Park far away from the grocery store and walk fast to get up to the store. If you can get a friend to meet you at a park a couple of mornings or evenings a week, all the better. Just move.
In a University of Georgia review of seventy studies test results showed that just twenty minutes of low to moderate intensity activities (bike riding walking or stretching) improved energy in as little as one month.
If you want to ease a chronic health problem see a pro and go slow. When a person feels chronically crummy it is tempting to do less and less making themselves weaker and weaker. To avoid injury and burnout, begin slowly. Start with ten minutes and build yourself up by a few minutes each workout. You can spend as much time stretching as you do on endurance at first. When you feel a strength, increase add another exercise to keep yourself challenged. Give me a call and I can help get your body moving again, an even recommend some gentle stretches to get you started.
If you want to lose weight do a combination of strength and cardio endurance.
We know that if we want to lose weight, what we consume is ninety percent of the factor. Yet the workout we choose can also make a difference. If we combine weight training and cardio we use the sugar in our blood first and then use fat for fuel after we use our sugar supply. Weight training speeds up the use of blood sugar so that we start using fat for fuel for a larger part of our workout. One of the reasons that low sugar diets are so helpful, is that the body uses up whatever sugar is supplied for the workout and then uses up fat more efficiently. It helps change use from a sugar burning machine to a fat burning machine.
If you want to be less stressed or depressed exercise is good medicine. Aerobic exercise such as walking briskly or running or riding a bike hard enough to get the heart rate up, showed results in test subjects. After 45 minutes of aerobic exercise 3 times a week, they showed improvement to their mood as much as taking the antidepressant Zoloft.
Other modalities such as yoga and dance also helped mood as well as memories. No matter what the reason is working out is a good idea for long term benefits.
And I can help you with each of those things. Sometimes hiring a person who will guide you and keep you accountable is just the push you need to get active and more healthy again.
Valentina Boonstra
movement instructor
