Exercise Defined
Exercise is a movement of the body to enhance physical fitness.
Most people know that exercise is important for the physical development of the self, yet a majority of them are skipping exercise often.
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Historic evidence suggests that for many thousands of years, human beings were more active and stronger than today.
The early humans had increased movement and activity, like going for long and tiring hunts, walking long distances that took weeks, making the prehistoric humans fitter than the best athletes today.
Technological breakthroughs have reduced our activity to a great extent ( vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, self-cleaning ovens, and even cars).
The rise of the internet gave us a whole lot of technology, curbing our need to move even more.
While we aren't replacing our saved energy with a different activity, in the past 70 years, hard and manual labor, which required toil and sweat, has been replaced by desk jobs, leading to sedentary lifestyles.
Sedentary lifestyle diseases like heart disease/strokes and diabetes are the leading cause of death in the world, according to the World Health Organization.
The way to change this sedentary epidemic:
- Exercise and be active all day, not just for an hour a day.
- Rethink your working style.
- Limit the number of sitting hours.
- Make it a habit to eat right.
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- Pick a regular (sedentary) part of your routine and switch it out for an active choice: Instead of the elevator, take the stairs;
- Commit to movement after the most frustrating, stressful part of your week: after a weekly meeting or work task;
- Work out while you watch TV: you get to indulge the part of your brain that's telling you to lie down on the couch while actually circumnavigating laziness.
The calories we burn every day include not only movement but all the energy needed to run the thousands of functions that keep us alive.
To understand the conflict between our good intentions and our contrary impulses, we can look at the dual process model. Our behavior are divided into two categories:
- The rational mechanisms, managed by the reflective system.
- The emotional mechanisms, managed by the impulsive system.
The impulsive system can facilitate or prevent the reflective system from putting our intentions into place.