Do you know? People who spend most of their time seated rather than do physical activities have a 45% higher mortality rate than those who are physically active.
Objectives:
After reading this article you will understand:
- What is Physical Activity?
- Benefits of being physically active.
- How can we get physically active and how it makes our day change?
What is Physical Activity?
Any movement of the body produced by muscle action that demands energy. It can be walking, running, changing positions, etc. Most people get confused regarding the terms physical activity and exercise but here’s to notify that exercise is planned and structured performance while physical activity is performed without special arrangements and plan.
Benefits of being physically active
Following are the benefits of physical activities that not only make our day but also our lives change:
- It helps to reduce several health-related problems and diseases
- It lowers the risk of heart and lung problems
- Maintain normal body weight
- Provide strength to muscles
- Keeps Bones strong
- Being physically active, we can also get benefits of social and emotional health
- It changes our mood and reduces stress
- We can get better sleep after being active a day
- Aerobic physical activity reduces the risk of disability in adults
- In children, it helps developing motor skills
- Early researches proved that adults and young ones who are physically active have a lower risk of developing depression
How Can We Get Physically Active and How It makes Our Day Change:
Being physically active does not mean that we have to join a gym or struggle hard; we can just add simple activities to our daily routine that can make some positive changes throughout the day. For example; climbing stairs instead of using elevators, playing outdoor games, changing position after every 20 minutes while sitting, start walking while doing phone calls, etc. Like these, some important ones are described below:
1. Walking:
- A simple and the easiest step to get active is walking. After having a full night sleep, a morning walk is necessary for us. It gives strength to our limbs as well as abdominal muscles, freshes our minds and lowers the risk of heart and lung problems.
- Low-intensity walk for a long time improves endurance although a brisk walk is also important, as research shows that it burns more than 200 calories in half an hour depending on our weight and intensity of the walk.
- Night walk (after dinner) is also an essential element for our health. It helps food to digest and reduces gastric problems.
2. Workout at home:
- “Cleaning your house can incorporate a variety of muscle groups without you even realizing it.”(Gaspari). It’s a fact that if we clean our house, it burns about 85 calories in 30 minutes.
- Most people think that cooking food is just a formality to fill our stomach. It’s the best way to get us physically active and help us burn our calories. Instead of ordering food or going to restaurants, we can get active by preparing a meal ourselves.
- Washing dishes is also a good source for being physically active, it burns our 128 calories per 60 minutes.
- We can also lose 128 calories in 60 minutes by ironing our clothes.
- The research estimated that by washing clothes, we can burn 148 calories in an hour.
3. Exercise at work:
- Most of us at our workplaces stay sedentary for hours that might affect our body posture, also we can get health-related problems. To stay physically active at our workplaces, we can change our position after every 20 minutes like sitting or standing. According to experts, standing burns our 50% more calories than sitting.
- We can fidget to stretch our muscles and get them active.
- When it’s a break from work, we may do different exercises such as lunges, squats, chin-ups, etc. To stay active and away from life-threatening disorders, it’ll make us physically as well as mentally and emotionally active and healthy.
Before you Leave!
There are many ways to stay physically active all day such as walking, jogging, workout at home, exercise at the workplace, etc. Physical activity improves our physical health as well as our mental, social and emotional health. It also reduces the risk of heart and lung diseases, lowers the stress, boosts our mood and provides us confidence. In a nutshell, being physically active not only makes our day change but also makes our life healthy and fit.