Fitness, Flexibility & Strengthening Your Body

Module 6.1

Even moderate exercise—30 minutes, three times weekly—has tremendous health benefits, decreasing the risk of heart disease and stroke, cancer, depression and anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain, and injury.

Like many activities—sex, sleep, healthy eating—exercise has a positive feedback loop. It's easier to want to exercise once you've benefited from exercise for one to two weeks.

For maintenance of fitness, prevention of heart disease and diabetes, and improvement of mood, you will want to do moderate exercise that gets your heart rate up for approximately 150 minutes weekly. If you want to lose weight, reverse high blood pressure, or improve cholesterol or diabetes, you will need to exercise more. You can do additional moderate exercise--say, 45 to 60 minutes 5 days a week (250 minutes weekly), like walking, hiking, water aerobics, or gentle bike riding. Or you can do more vigorous activity for 30 minutes 4 times a week. See some suggested activities in the list below!

Examples of Aerobic Exercise

●     Walking

●     Hiking

●     Jogging

●     Running

●     Swimming

●     Cycling

●     Aerobic fitness classes

●     Dancing

●     Yoga

●     Cardio machines at the gym

●     Cross-country skiing

●     Vigorous lawn and garden work

●     Jumping rope

●     Rowing

●     Skating

●     Racquet sports

●     Soccer

●     Basketball

●     Volleyball

●     Softball