The Importance of Exercise - Be Healthier Happier & Improve Your Body

Exercise is so tremendously important in our lives. Whether it's to just generally be healthier, to be happier, to improve your body image and look sexy or if it’s just for fun, exercise is awesome and tremendously important.

Health Benefits of Exercise
Exercise gives you tons of different health benefits, depending on what you do. Weight lifting will increase your bone density and muscular strength, running will strengthen your heart and legs, and even walking will keep you moving and maintain flexibility in your legs and hips.

Exercise can also help lower your blood pressure, as well as increasing the concentration in your blood of HDL cholesterol (good cholesterol). You could be popping pills that do those things instead (along with a whole slew of side effects), but exercise is much cheaper and better for you.

Sharpening Your Mind & Strengthening Your Tissues Too
Yes, exercise can help you sharpen your mind too. Exercise has been shown to help people on memory tests, and it will help you retain your mental functions as you age. Maybe even better than Sudoku.

As for strengthening your tissues, this is an undisputed fact. Strength training helps your muscle tissue the most, of course, but it also strengthens your connective tissues as well. These tissues hold your joints together and are vital for playing sports, not twisting your ankles, and living a healthy and happy life.

Exercise Helps You Avoid Death
Think of it this way, when the most you can possibly do is the least you can possibly do, you die. When all you can do is lie in bed, death isn't very far away.

Exercise increases the most that you can do. Whether it's the most weight you can lift, or the fastest that you can run, or the highest you can jump, exercise increases your abilities.

Make sure you keep and also increase that distance between the most and the least you can do. That is the key to living a long, active and healthy life.

Mental Health Benefits of Exercise
Exercise feels good. Okay, not all the time but when you've finished exercising, you feel good. Endorphins are the “happy drugs” that exercise releases into your brain. They cause you to feel good, or get the “runner's high” that people associate with exercise.

Further more, you form a sexier self-image of who you are. By exercising, you will begin to think about yourself as a healthy, active, and attractive person. Not a couch potato.

Body Benefits of Exercise
Exercise makes you look sexy! There are really no two ways about it. An active and in-shape person is more attractive than an out of shape person.

I know that internal qualities and personality are important too. But people are superficial (I know I am), and I want to be with an attractive and active person. That's how life works.

Most Importantly, Exercise Is Fun!
Exercise doesn't have to be a death march to the gym each morning. It can be fun. Playing Ultimate Frisbee, soccer, going for a jog in the morning to get some time to yourself or even going out dancing at night. Exercise takes so many different forms that you should really find one you like doing.

Find something active that you like to do. Whether it's skiing, biking, dancing, or playing with your dog. Just find out what it is and do it. Not only will exercise lose its onerous character, but it will psychologically pump you up. You'll enjoy exercising and find other fun and active things to do!

By Aaron McCloud