Everyone knows that regular, ideally daily, exercise that gets the heart rate up, and sweat forming is right for you. We are told this from everyone and every angle, and we know that doing this will help us to lose weight, get fit, build muscle, and be healthy.
Yet although these can be motivating factors for many, it’s not what makes everyone want to work out, exercise, and train. Yet even those who don’t want to do it should. Knowing some of the other amazing benefits of regular exercise may well help you to find the motivation you need, even if the ‘usual’ reasons aren’t of interest at all. Read on to find out more.
Better Brain Power
As well as making our physical bodies stronger and healthier, regular exercise can help our brains in the same way. The more you exercise, the better your memory tends to be, for example, and many studies have been carried out to show that this is true. There is a range of physical exercises you can do to specifically boost your brain power. These include planks, as these are great for meditation, and running. If you can’t run, however, walking is just as good!
Although the reasons are yet to be fully worked out, the results are clear; the more you exercise, the stronger your entire body becomes, and that includes the brain.
You’ll Feel Happier
Although you might not think it if you aren’t someone who usually enjoys exercise but working out and training can make you feel happier. Anything from a good, brisk walk to weight training to playing a sport makes your brain release additional hormones and chemicals into the body. These include endorphins and dopamine. When this happens, your mood gets a boost, and the amount of cortisol (often called the ‘stress hormone’) will be reduced.
You’ll feel much brighter and happier at the end of your workout than you might at the beginning, and the results of those chemicals and hormones will last for a long time afterwards, brightening your day considerably. If you add in the excellent playlist from Myprotein (or create one of your own) you will feel even better; the combination of music and exercise produces even more feel-good hormones.
You Can Slow Down Aging
Ageing is something we all worry about. Whether it’s because we don’t want to stop living our lives in the way, we currently are, or we don’t like the idea that our looks are going to change, or we’re worried about mortality, ageing is a concern. We’ll often go to extremes to prevent it or slow it down as much as possible. This might include surgery, pills, creams, Botox, and much more.
What if you discovered that exercise might help you to slow down ageing? Would you be more willing to do it more regularly? The truth is that exercise can help some people because it slows down the division of cells.
Ageing occurs when cells divide. The more often they divide, the weaker they become, so over time skin becomes more fragile, muscles aren’t as strong, eyesight fails, and so on. The older you get, the more your cells will have divided, and the weaker you will be. When you exercise regularly, some people find that their cells don’t divide quite so often. So, although you will still get older, you won’t feel the effects quite so quickly.
It’s Good for Your Skin
Following on from the idea that regular exercise can help to slow down ageing, it’s also important to note that it is good for your skin. For those who care about how they look and want to protect the largest organ in their body (the skin), exercise is a great way to do it.
When you exercise, more oxygen can get to the skin cells because more blood, in general, is flowing around your body. When they are fully oxygenated, your skin cells will look brighter, less pale, healthier. On top of this, another bonus is that the better oxygenated your skin cells are, the faster they will heal – if you have had an injury that has broken the skin, exercising will fix it much more quickly than if it was just left alone. Plus, there will be less chance of the wound scarring.
Results Come Quickly
For awe-inspiring results, training and exercise will have to be done, and done hard, for many months. However, with even a small amount of regular exercise, slight changes can be seen very quickly. Even if you can’t see the good you are doing for your body, you will feel it, often after the very first time you do any exercise at all.
This is good news for those who don’t often feel motivated to exercise regularly. After just a few days you’ll feel so much better, and after a small number of weeks, the physical results will be noticeable too (if you are eating healthily at the same time).
The fact that you’ll see and feel results relatively quickly is a huge motivator and is definitely a significant benefit of regular exercise.
You Will Eat Less
For some, it’s not the lack of exercise as such that is their biggest issue when it comes to gaining weight and being unable to lose it again. For some, it’s the amount they eat. Even healthy food should be taken in moderation and eating large portions of food or snacking between meals (or both) is bad for you.
It may sound strange to say but exercising regularly can help you to eat less. Your first thought might be that you will build up a big appetite when you do exercise, but this is not entirely the case. Studies show that after exercising your appetite is often smaller; you will need something to eat, but your body really won’t want as much as it usually has. This is not only a physical reaction but could well be partly mental as well; if you’ve just done lots of hard work, you don’t want to ruin it by overeating.
Everyone knows that regular, ideally daily, exercise that gets the heart rate up, and sweat forming is right for you. We are told this from everyone and every angle, and we know that doing this will help us to lose weight, get fit, build muscle, and be healthy.
Yet although these can be motivating factors for many, it’s not what makes everyone want to work out, exercise, and train. Yet even those who don’t want to do it should. Knowing some of the other amazing benefits of regular exercise may well help you to find the motivation you need, even if the ‘usual’ reasons aren’t of interest at all. Read on to find out more.
