Is Exercise Necessary to Lose Weight?
Regular exercise is good for your body and your mind. Exercise helps you lose weight, combat diseases and conditions, improve mental health, increase energy levels, and boost brain power.
The benefits of exercise are so numerous that it can be hard to know where to start! In this guide, we will look at some of the most important reasons to the question “Why is exercise important?”
Exercise Can Help You Lose Weight
Exercise can help you lose weight. The most obvious way it does this is by burning calories, but there are other ways exercise helps improve your body’s ability to burn off excess fat.
Exercise increases the number of calories you burn at rest — even if you don't move during the day, just a few hours of exercise will increase how many calories you burn per minute for several hours after your workout ends.
Exercise also makes us less hungry and increases our metabolic rate (the rate at which calories are burned). This means that when we exercise regularly, we may find ourselves eating less food than we otherwise would have because our bodies are burning more energy throughout the day.
Exercise also improves insulin sensitivity and helps lower blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes.
Exercise Combats Health Conditions and Diseases
Exercise is good for your heart. It can reduce high blood pressure and improve cholesterol levels, which can lead to a reduced risk of heart disease.
Exercise is also beneficial for people with chronic pain. It improves mood, reduces inflammation, and boosts endorphins (the body's natural "feel good" chemicals).
It's no secret that exercise helps people with cancer by reducing fatigue, increasing energy levels, improving sleep quality and boosting the immune system.
Exercise Improves Mental Health
Another answer to why is exercise important is for your mental health. Exercise improves your mental health in three ways:
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Managing stress. Exercise is an effective way to manage the physical and emotional effects of stress. It provides a distraction from stressful thoughts, and it can even help you feel more relaxed.
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Sleeping better. According to Harvard Medical School's Division of Sleep Medicine website, regular exercise helps promote quality sleep by reducing anxiety and improving sleep quality.
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Managing anxiety and depression. According to the Anxiety Disorders Association of America website, experts believe that regular aerobic exercise may be helpful in treating anxiety disorders because it releases endorphins (happy hormones) in the brain that make you feel good. Aerobic exercises such as running or cycling are recommended over weightlifting if you're experiencing symptoms related to depression because they tend to increase energy levels while lifting weights tends to deplete them.
Exercise Increases Your Energy Levels
You know what it's like to feel really tired? Sometimes you can barely get out of bed in the morning. You might have a hard time focusing at work or school. Or maybe your mood is just off, and everything seems more difficult than usual.
That’s because lack of sleep can quickly make you feel exhausted—and exercise can help fix this problem by giving you more energy throughout the day.
Exercise increases the number of mitochondria in your cells, creating more energy than they normally would. More mitochondria means that your body will produce more ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which is like fuel for cells to run on.
Exercise also increases the number of blood vessels in your body by expanding them wider so there’s more room for oxygenated blood flow through them. This extra oxygen gets pumped through our bodies with every heartbeat; it then gets delivered straight into each cell where it’s needed most!
In addition to getting its nutrients from food sources such as fruits and vegetables, our bodies also rely on oxygen from air breathed into lungs before being transported through capillaries until finally reaching every single cell inside us--including brain cells whose activities are vital components needed when learning something new or remembering something important.
Exercise Boosts Brain Power
Exercise increases the size of the hippocampus in the brain. The hippocampus is a key area of the brain that's involved with memory and learning, and it's one of the first areas affected by Alzheimer's disease. In fact, people who exercise regularly are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s than people who don’t exercise at all or only do so occasionally.
Exercise also increases blood flow to your brain. You know how when you’re immersed in an exhilarating experience—like watching an action movie or playing video games—you forget about everything else around you? That’s because your body releases endorphins during these experiences, which act as feel-good neurotransmitters that make us feel relaxed and happy (or excited). Well, guess what else increases your production of endorphins? Exercise!
Exercise can also increase the production of new brain cells (neurons), help regulate levels of serotonin (the “happy hormone), increase dopamine production (a neurotransmitter linked to motivation) and boost levels of BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), which helps protect neurons from damage caused by stress or aging
Conclusion
So, there you have it—six reasons why is exercise important. If you ever find yourself doubting whether or not you should go for a run or take the stairs instead of an elevator, remember these benefits:
Exercise can help you lose weight, improve your mental health, maintain a healthy heart and blood pressure levels, reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety (and even prevent them), and boost brain power—even if it's just by improving your memory. Not to mention that it will make you feel more energized throughout the day!
