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10
Totally Unhealthy Eating Behaviors To Avoid!
10
Totally Unhealthy Eating Behaviors To Avoid!
4
Secrets to A Flat Stomach
Take
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Weight
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The
Fountain of Youth Within US!
The
Fitness Pyramid
True
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Nutrition
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How
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Fitness
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Sensible
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Health
Spas: Exercise Your Rights
Energy
Nutrition
Energy
Nutrition
Energy
Nutrition
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When
Disease Makes Sense
Real
Muscle Real Fast!
Health
Information
Health
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Success
with Strength Training
Eat
Fat to Burn Fat
Exercise
on Long Flights Essential
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Why Physical Fitness?
Although the most opportune time for developing lifelong fitness habits is
in the childhood years, it is in the late teens and early twenties that
men and women develop a fitness consciousness. At this stage in life you
have reached physical maturity; your body is at its natural peak of
physiological efficiency and health. However, observe friends in their
late twenties and early thirties. In many of them this natural fitness has
begun to disappear. Lack of exercise is beginning to show its effect. An
increase of body fatness, a loss of muscle tone, and a lessened breathing
capacity are some of the obvious signs of physiological deterioration.
These middle-aged characteristics begin to reveal themselves in many
Americans in their mid to late twenties. Unfortunately, our bodies are not
programmed to stand the stress of sitting or of being inactive.
Our modern life-style fosters unfitness. Many technological advances are
intended to eliminate physical exertion from everyday activities. The
automobile and television are key contributors to our sedentary lifestyle,
and we have become accustomed to other automated energy savers: elevators,
riding lawn mowers, motorized golf carts, snow blowers and various remote
control devices. The eighties brought us the home computer. Such advances
enable us to carry out our everyday chores more easily. Microcomputers not
only enable us to keep our home or business records in order but also
provide hours of enjoyable play with computer games of many kinds. Or just
surfing and chatting. However, the rapid repetitive movements required in
manipulating the controls and/or keyboard does little for physical
fitness.
Overeating, addiction and laziness are other detrimental characteristics
of a sedentary life-style. At the same time, we live in a competitive
society characterized by pressing domestic problems, business obligations
and deadline tensions. All of these have an impact on the physiological
systems of the body and appear to affect our state of health. Your
emotions, nerves, glands, and mental state along with your heart, lungs,
and muscles are all fused into a complex, wonderful organism - your body.
Thus, there is a dire need, more than at any time in the history of
humankind, to seek out stimulating exercise that will offset the perils of
modern living. In fact, working out regularly to maintain a high level of
fitness enables you to enjoy the privilege of all our modern gadgets and
our computers.
Many men and women feel that their daily work provides them with enough
exercise for fitness. Running up and down stairs or standing all day at a
job seems to be physical exertion. It is exertion, of course, but such
limited activities do not use the lungs fully or provide adequate
stimulation for the heart to produce a training effect. If normal, day to
day activities leave you fatigued at the end of the day, then you need the
increased energy and vitality that comes from regular physical exertion.
You must use energy to gain energy. In other words, regular stimulation of
the total body through vigorous exercise produces increased strength and
endurance, characteristics associated with good health. These attributes
cannot be acquired from sitting at a desk all day, watching sports on
television, riding elevators, or snacking.
Now that inactivity has been recognized as a threat to physiological well
being, some authorities have suggested that exercise may be the cheapest
preventative medicine in the world. Researchers in medicine, nutrition,
psychology, physiology, and physical education agree that exercise,
properly performed, is necessary for maintaining functional physical
fitness. No responsible health educator will ever suggest that exercise is
a panacea. But it is clear that, just as we need food, rest and sleep, we
need daily exercise for the maintenance of our physical capacities.
Physical fitness is not an end in itself but a means to an end. It
provides the basis for optimal physiological health and gives us the
capacity to enjoy a full life.
WAY OF LIFE:
Detriments to Good Health
1. Inactivity
2. Improper nutrition
3. Smoking
4. Poor management of stress
5. Excessive use of alcohol
6. Drug abuse
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