Health and fitness Essays

Health and fitness Essays Health and fitness Paper Health and fitness Paper I have been told by my well-meaning friends that very fit people have two advantages when they rest. First, their wide recuperation zone enables them to handle physical or emotional stress better. When a fit person gets the flu, for example, his heart rate may increase up to 35 percent of maximum, but he is still in his recuperation zone. When an unfit person gets the flu, his heart rate pushes him out of the recuperation zone so tissue repair is jeopardized. Second, very fit people can be active and still be in their recuperation zone. When my fit friend gets a cold, his mom wants him to rest. For her, rest means sitting down. For my friend, playing basketball outside with his friends in the driveway may be rest. It takes a lot of running around to drive him above 50 percent maximum heart rate. Fit people rest and recuperate while having fun doing active things. One must not overlook the significance of this: it may be the most important thing one will ever learn about fitness. Fat, out-of-shape people often complain of how hard it is to get fit again. They try to exercise religiously, but something always seems to go wrong, causing repeated setbacks. Their recuperation zone is so narrow that it’s hard to stay within it. Even if they exercise perfectly, monitoring their breathing and heart rate, the slightest cold, muscle strain, stress drives them above that narrow zone, thus decreasing the time spent in recuperation. Fit people, on the other hand, appear not to need rest. When they are doing gentle activity, they are still in their recuperation zone, repairing tissue, replenishing glycogen and building muscle. I guess I stand to benefit if I lose another 5-8 pounds because at 125 pounds, I still feel quite heavy. After some thinking, I decided to enroll and try out a new gym and dance center near our place. I still feel that it would be beneficial for me if I exercise over and over until I gradually get fitter and my resting heart rate gradually decreases, giving an ever-widening zone in which to recuperate. Recently a friend suggested that when I hike, I actually am in the subaerobic zone most of the time. Occasional uphills push me into the aerobic zone, and very steep climbs push me into the anaerobic zone. But most of the time, I amble along the subaerobically, enjoying the scenery. Because I do so much of it, I’m quite sure my subaerobic pastime does more to maintain my fitness than the aerobic jogging I do when I’m home. What are the reasons why some people are physically active while others are sedentary? Some people are basically just too lazy to flex a muscle or too. exercising, and went too active in their life. People can definitely become more flexible as they get older, instead of less, but like everything else, it takes consistent practice. You don’t have to stretch every single day if you don’t want. But do stretch before you exercise, and try to do a full stretching routine two or three times a week. Describe reasons that underlie why people are active or inactive. Highlight and emphasize the one or two reasons that you think are the critical ones for most active and inactive people. Some people exercise because they understand that exercise keeps blood sugar levels in control. This is the same with the high cholesterol levels which I already have. Judging from the slew of books and magazine articles extolling the virtues of various â€Å"surefire† weight loss programs, the financial success of reducing clubs, and the popularity of special foods that claim to make people lose weight, sometimes it appears that the American national pastime is not baseball, but dieting. Although some people may be overweight because they suffer from some kind of metabolic or physiological disturbance, the overwhelming majority of overweight people are so because their level of physical activity is too low to9 match the calories they consume. How do these reasons explain my own level of physical activity? These reasons level with my own level of physical activity because I am mostly seated down, whether in the classroom or at home in front of the computer. I noticed that   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  daily, I am rooted to my chair for hours on end and I   is not working for me at all. I know I need to be moving because I realize that our bodies were designed to move. Because machines do a lot of our work for us, and because many occupations, including going to school, involve many hours of sitting, it is easy for most individuals to ingest more calories than they expend. Moreover, the ready available food, especially high-calorie snack foods such as potato chips, candy and the like, makes it even easier to acquire   needless calories and excess pounds. Consider how these reasons seem to explain your own level of physical activity. Upon looking at my own body needs, it seems that if I want to adopt a weight-reducing program that results in a loss   of 1 pound a month, I can easily plan my dietary and physical activities so I can produce a net daily deficit of 120 calories.   All I have to do is to walk a   little more each day or cut out a soft drink or a couple of cookies. Most people are involved in special diets and other rapid-weight loss programs. Such programs plunge people into unusual and sometimes bizarre exercise and eating behaviors that may produce temporary   weight loss but that, because they are so unusual, cannot be sustained. People become impatient with time-consuming exercises and become bored with restricted diets; soon they give up and return to their former life styles and habits. As for me, I know that in order to achieve permanent weight loss and energy balance at a desired weight, overweight people have to change their long-term eating behaviors and their levels of physical activity. In short, successful weight loss and permanent weight control require a lifestyle change. WORK CITED Charles b Corbin, William r, Corbin, gr. j welk, and Karen a welk.