Welcome to Fitness Fanatic, a place to find everything you need to be fit, eat healthy, and live a healthier lifestyle. I grew up learning to love fitness and started weight lifting at a young age. My mother was always into exercising and making sure we ate healthy. I will include some of my own tips I’ve learned through the years and post in a orderly fashion to give you the essential steps to get you to your fitness goals while moving towards a healthier lifestyle. Never think it’s too late to start exercising and change your life. Fall is a great time to start a new fitness plan and get on a schedule. With summer distractions, out of the way it’s time to start with a new slate.
The first thing I would like to talk about is why everyone needs fitness and nutrition and the importance of it. For Starters, exercise reduces the risk of many health problems including cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia, stroke, type 2 diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, and can also slow down how quickly your body ages.
Here is a picture of a graph showing how exercise decreases the risk of death from heart disease.
The American Heart Association recommends a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise five days a week. Considering the amount of time people waste on social media and watching television these days how hard is it to find 30 minutes of your day to exercise?
Secondly, exercise and nutrition are essential for maintaining a healthy weight. To find out if you are a healthy weight you need to find your Body Mass Index (BMI). To calculate your BMI go to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Your BMI is your ratio of height to weight and lets us know if were underweight, normal weight, overweight, or obese. A healthy BMI is between 18.5 to 24.9. Exercise burns more calories and if your trying to lose weight you have to burn more calories than you consume. An average male who exercises usually burns about 3,000 calories a day while a man who is inactive burns about 2,800 calories a day. An average female who exercises usually burns about 2,200 calories a day while a woman who is inactive burns about 2,000 calories a day. If you are serious about losing weight you should count your calories and one of the best ways to do that is with the My Fitness Pal App on your phone.
Finally, exercise is an enjoyable way to be social and improve your overall quality of life. Exercise gives you time to unwind and can help you connect with family and friends. It improves your mood by stimulating your brain and making you feel happier and relaxed.
Here is an image of a workout class. Workout classes are a great way to get fit and have fun all the while you have an instructor and others around you pushing you to reach your full potential.
Nutrition is key to staying healthy, weight loss, and building muscle. Eating healthy prevents you from suffering from future diseases, provides the necessary nutrients for your body to function, creates new cells and cleans toxins. Lastly, eating healthier will give you a boost and make you feel better overall. There are many ways to eat healthier that we will address in a future blog.
Here is an image of the food pyramid. The food pyramid is key when trying to improve your diet. The food pyramid shows us the proportions of servings we should eat of each group every day.
Works Cited
American Heart Association Recommendations for Physical Activity in Adults, www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/PhysicalActivity/FitnessBasics/American-Heart-Association-Recommendations-for-Physical-Activity-in-Adults_UCM_307976_Article.jsp#.WbHgR62ZNR1. Accessed 7 Sept. 2017.
Cespedes, Andrea. “How Many Calories Does the Body Naturally Burn Per Day?” LIVESTRONG.COM, Leaf Group, 8 Nov. 2015, www.livestrong.com/article/278257-how-many-calories-does-the-body-naturally-burn-per-day/. Accessed 7 Sept. 2017.
I hope your blog serves as motivation for me to live a healthier lifestyle. There were a good two months during my sophomore year when i used the my fitness pal app to count my calories…and it worked! I lost a few pounds and I felt really good about myself. However, after those two months, i started convincing myself that I basically knew how many calories I was eating, and that I no longer needed to app to track my calories. I was really wrong, because the moment i stopped using the app, everything went downhill. I started convincing myself, “Oh, I’ll go back to it in a few days,” but logging the food I ate was no longer as fun as it was in the beginning. Now that I’m in college, and food is at my dispense everywhere I go, I have to be more wary of what I’m eating. I’m excited to read your posts on nutrition, because i’m not really a fitness junkie.