Most people generally understand the significance of exercise. Still, listing some of its specific benefits clarifies why exercise improves everyone’s quality of life.
1. Working out increases your lifespan. American life expectancy is 78.6 years. Countries like Slovenia have surpassed us in this regard due to Americans making poor lifestyle choices. Among other things, exercise reduces your chances of getting cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. It also strengthens your bones, clears your arteries, and lowers your blood pressure. These and other health benefits spell longer life.
2. Working out improves your appearance. It reduces body fat and oxygenates the body. Hence, people who exercise tend to have better complexions and svelter physiques than those who don’t.
3. You feel better about yourself when you exercise. It allows you to reduce stress and blow off steam in productive ways through the stimulation of certain brain chemicals. Combine this with an improved physical appearance, and you’ll feel happier, more relaxed, and increasingly confident.
4. Working out increases your energy level. Specifically, it increases endurance and improves muscle strength. A stronger heart and deeper lung capacity lead to higher energy levels. This allows you to accomplish considerably more while taking in the process with greater acuity.
5. The economy improves when people take better care of themselves. U.S. healthcare spending has reached around $3.7 trillion. Life-threatening conditions like heart attack, stroke, Parkinson’s, and cancer would be greatly reduced if more Americans exercised, which in turn would lead to a massive reduction in healthcare costs. This makes exercise an economically prudent and patriotic gesture.
6. Working out inspires good habits that carry over into the rest of your life. Regular exercise requires planning, to include short-, medium-, and long-term goals for those actively involved in serious exercise regimens. This planning includes inductive and deductive reasoning and a constellation of other necessary tasks, such as learning the mechanics of diet and other health science topics. Those who exercise turn their bodies into case studies in health and well-being. The discipline and critical thinking skills required, here, carry into the rest of one’s life.
7. Your mind works better when you exercise. Exercise improves memory while slowing memory deterioration due to aging. Memory plays a central role in comprehension, imagination, and critical thinking. Exercise also accelerates neural activity, which means it helps you process information more quickly. In an increasingly complex and competitive world, we want to capitalize on every mental advantage we can, and exercise is an excellent way to do so.
8. You create new social circles for yourself when you work out. Since those who exercise share a common interest, they tend to band together in various ways and offer each other encouragement and support. Thus, anyone feeling isolated or insecure can often find exercise partners to alleviate these anxieties. Humans are highly social animals, and exercise offers the perfect opportunity to socialize in singularly productive ways.
9. Working out allows you to connect with nature. It gets you out of the house and into the beautiful world surrounding you. This changes a person’s consciousness and energy level. Every day in nature is an endless exploration of the living planet. You never know what you’ll encounter in forests, fields, deserts, and coastal areas.
10. You learn new things about yourself when you work out. It’s a journey of discovery. You learn your limitations, but you also discover that you can accomplish far more than you had previously imagined. This leads to clearer insight into how your body works. Likewise, when you work out, you start seeing other people in a different light. You notice things like skin tone, energy level, and body motion in those around you. From this, you are better able to gauge your own physical progress and appearance. You lead a more enriching, purposeful life that makes you happier to be alive and sharing your experience with others.
If you haven’t worked out in some time and have decided to start doing so again, be sure to pace yourself, and enjoy the process. Have fun with it. Don’t set goals that are too difficult to achieve, and listen very carefully to your body. Take your time, don’t be too hard on yourself, and work your way back into shape at a sensible rate. This will keep you on task and looking forward to each new day. You deserve nothing less.
