Cardio Exercise and Your Body

Have you ever wondered why cardio exercise and your body need to have an intimate relationship together? Cardio exercise is essential in keeping our bodies healthy. In fact, it can help us get to optimal health.

What is cardio exercise?

The word cardio is a short term for the word cardiovascular. The word cardiovascular refers to our heart. Cardio vascular exercise (cardio exercise) is an activity that raises your heart rate, and keeps it elevated for a certain period of time.

We also refer to cardio exercise as aerobic exercise. These type of exercises include the following:

• brisk walking
• jogging
• swimming
• cycling
• roller blading, and many more!

Physical Fitness Guidelines

A whopping 66 percent of Americans are either obese or overweight. We realize at I Choose Thin, that adults groan when they realize they have to fit any kind of exercise into their already busy schedules, even if it is only 5 minutes. Ask yourself this question: How important to you is it to find some time for your health.

It is clear that many of us are not following the guidelines that prescribe 150 minutes a week for moderate cardio exercise combined with strength training on two or more days a week.

Maybe this sounds like a lot of minutes to exercise, but if you exercise during the week, it will break it up into smaller chunks. If you are incorporating smaller exercise sessions, then the 150 minutes will be easier to swallow.

For example: You could walk briskly for 10 minutes three times a day, 5 days a week. Now that doesn't sound so bad does it. Now this would give you a total of 150 minutes a week of cardio exercise.

Adults should slowly increase their activity to 300 minutes a week which would be the same as exercising 1 hour daily, for 5 days. You will not only feel fantastic but the health benefits are unreal.

The Simple Facts About Cardio Exercise

Ok, so what makes cardio so important? Cardiovascular exercise simply means that you are actively involved in doing some kind of activity that raises your heart rate to a level where you are working hard, but you can still talk.

Below are examples of why cardio is so important:

• It helps you burn calories.
• Strengthens your heart.
• It strengthens the lungs, and the lung capacity.
• It will boost your metabolism.
• It reduces stress.
• It will increase your energy.
• It helps to promote restful sleep.

Conclusion

Cardio exercise and your body go hand in hand in order to help you develop a healthy body. Cardio does a body good! It will help you lose all those wanted pounds, and your energy level will soar. It will also take the stress out of a hard day at work. You will sleep deeper and sounder. Stress and sleepless nights attribute to being overweight or obese, and putting physical activity into your life will increase your well being. Find the time in your life to add some cardio, and see how it will improve your health, your mind, and your overall well being.