Aerobic activity is essential for a healthy heart; and it plays a major factor in weight loss and control, stress reduction, and disease prevention.
Cardiovascular health
Aerobic activity keeps you young and allows you to enjoy life to the fullest by making your heart stronger. As your heart muscle becomes more efficient, a larger amount of blood can be pumped with each stroke and fewer strokes are needed, lessening the workload on your heart (this is why a fit person has a lower resting heart rate than an unfit person does). If you're aerobically fit, you have more energy and reduce your risk for major diseases such as hypertension, heart disease, and stroke.
Weight loss and weight control
Aerobic activity helps you to lose or maintain weight by burning calories that would otherwise be stored as fat. This doesn't mean you've got a free ticket to eat more, but you can certainly lose weight and enjoy a healthy and varied diet without going hungry. Aerobic activity acts as an appetite suppressant on the body and boosts your metabolism, keeping your body burning extra calories for hours after you've completed your exercise.
Stress reduction: exercise makes you feel good!
Our bodies react to any type of stress as if it were danger, triggering the ''fight or flight" response, which produces adrenaline and tenses our muscles for combat. But when there is no combat, we end up with lots of unspent energy in the form of tight, aching muscles, headaches, and even stomach problems. Exercise allows us to release that unspent energy, diffusing pent-up anger and releasing muscle tension.
Exercise can also give you a high! Maybe you've heard of endorphins, those chemicals that send good feelings radiating throughout your body. When you engage in vigorous exercise, your body responds by releasing endorphins and elevating your mood often referred to as a "runner's high."
