Creating and maintaining an active lifestyle in the 21st century must include a number of components, which focus on your physical, emotional and mental well-being, with the end goal of ensuring good health.
When good health, either physical or mental, is lost nothing else really matters. Without good health, you cannot enjoy family, friends or wealth and possessions. Poor health not only affects you, it also affects those around you, as it’s difficult to enjoy yourself when someone you love or care deeply about is suffering.
A key to long-term health is an active lifestyle; keep your body moving by finding enjoyment in motion. Enjoyment in motion can include physical activity just for fun, such as tennis, swimming, in-line skating, ball hockey or dancing. Daily activity reduces stress and assists in maintaining a healthy weight. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking you don’t have to work out if you are otherwise physically active. Physical activity is not technically the same as exercise.
Physical activity, or sport, refers to any expenditure of energy brought about by bodily movement through the contraction of skeletal muscles. This includes a complete spectrum of activity ranging from very low resting levels to maximal exertion. Conversely, exercise is a component of physical activity, but it is distinguished by the fact that it is structured progressively in relation to the science of exercise physiology and organized to develop and maintain total physical fitness for the benefit of health and performance.
Exercise is meaningless unless it is done regularly and according to a focused plan. True fitness is determined by measuring muscle strength, muscle endurance, flexibility, aerobic capacity and body composition. Without consistency, no progress is possible and your physical condition will diminish. To avoid injury, an exercise program must also include all aspects, including a proper warm-up, a cardio component and strength training, with varying degrees of intensity.
Exercise alone is insufficient to create and maintain a healthy active lifestyle; diet is an essential component and has been called both an art and a science. To maintain optimum health, you must nourish an active body with high quality food and natural health products in a skillful, safe and consistent manner. What you eat is important, but also when, where and how you eat. From a biological point of view, the prime function of nutrition is to supply a living organism with the energy and micronutrients it requires for nourishment, optimum function and maintenance of life. Taste, texture and culinary pleasure are secondary to provision of such nutrients in relation to biological demand. The function of food is to sustain life, not simply to gratify sensory pleasure.
Your diet should include as much fresh, whole organic food as possible. Avoid empty calorie foods and the white refined mainstream staples of North America, such as white bread. Ensure that your diet is compatible with your blood type, your immune system, your ethnic origin, your body type and your metabolism. Incorporate vitamins and supplements in your diet as necessary, and recommended by nutrition professional.
Ultimately, the practice of exercise and diet is a means to an end. You can enjoy the means but the ultimate objective is to achieve the end through the means. The end is the health we require to enjoy an active healthy lifestyle. The means are also necessary to preserve enough wellness so that we can continue to work and support ourselves and our family now and in the future. Lose your health and you lose your independence and much of your freedom.
Craig is one of the top Vancouver personal trainers [http://www.vancouverpersonaltraining.net] and owner of Transfigure Physique Transformation Services. Please visit my blog for more health and fitness training strategies [http://vancouverpersonaltraining.net/blog]
