July 22, 2009

Exercising Helps You Live A Healthier Life

By Austin Stern

Every year people across the world make New Year's resolutions. These resolutions range from going back to school to saving up and buying that expensive car they have been eying for the past few months. But one of the most common goals people make around that time of year is the decision to get their butts into gear, and get themselves back in shape.

If you decide to work out for you New Year's resolution, that will help you to lose weight and build muscle. When you workout, your muscles begin to tear, which will help them grow bigger as they begin to heal. Whether you are doing cardiovascular exercises or weight training, you will be burning fat.

Different muscles will be exercised and used depending on the type of workout you choose. You'll be burning calories no matter which way you choose though. As long as you are working out and burning more calories than you are consuming by eating, then you will begin to see good changes in your body.

Cardio exercises stress the amount of oxygen the body can hold during strenuous activity, forcing the heart to pump faster and in turn forces the body to burn more calories. Some examples of cardio exercises are walking, running, swimming, and bicycling, just to name a few.Cardiovascular activity also boosts an individuals oxygen capacity, which allows them to run, swim, or overall be active longer with less stress on the lungs and heart as time moves forward.

Strength training exercises, better known as weight lifting, is the practice of lifting a weighted object against the force of gravity, often to tear muscle to them later have it grow as it heals. Strength training is quite popular across the world because it is easy to get started. Many people use it to tone their bodies (or to make themselves more attractive), its also a great way to burn those troublesome calories.

Body resistance training is a fantastic and cheap form of strength training. When you're doing this, you are only using your body's weight as resistance, nothing else (like weights or resistance bands). Push ups are the prime example, as well as sit-ups and jumping jacks.

You can really burn fat quickly with strength training. Although you've probably heard that muscle can weight more than fat, it does, but do not worry. When you engage in strength training, you are building muscle which adds pounds (good pounds) but it also burns away fat quickly, causing you to lose very unhealthy weight.

New Year's eve or 4th of July and everywhere in between are all good times to start losing weight. You will feel better about yourself as well as have way more energy than you ever did before. Like the Nike commercial says, Just Do It!

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