3 Tips on How to Use Exercise to Boost Your Wellness
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There's a lot of interest these days in identifying and applying good techniques for boosting "wellness." These include things such as meditating, connecting with spiritual traditions of various kinds, practising positive affirmations, and so on.
Of course, a major component of wellness has always been – and always will be – getting the right amount of exercise and physical activity.
Research consistently shows that people who get a good baseline amount of exercise on a regular basis, are happier, healthier, and higher-performing than those who live more sedentary lives, or who burn themselves out completely through overly intense workouts.
There's a certain balancing act to be struck here, no doubt. So, here are some tips on using exercise to boost your wellness.
Listen to your own intuition – do exercise that makes you feel good, not destroyed
The first tip for using exercise to boost your wellness, is to listen to your own intuition, and to gravitate towards forms of exercise that make you feel good, rather than leaving you feeling as though you've been levelled and destroyed.
It's become pretty popular in recent times for people to go "all-out" in their workouts, by applying – if not abusing – high intensity training principles.
Suffice to say, the body craves a degree of equilibrium and balance, and training too hard and too often is just as negative as training too little.
In addition to the actual intensity of your workouts, you should look for specific forms of exercise that you find enjoyable and sustainable. For example, you might benefit more from yoga classes for beginners than from a Crossfit routine.
Focus on getting a lot of low-level movement and activity into each day
Interesting studies in recent years have indicated that one of the most important keys to good overall health and longevity, might just be getting a lot of low-level movement and activity squeezed into each day, as opposed to just focusing on more "formal" workouts.
Specifically, research has found that people who walk around more during the day, enjoyed better health outcomes across the board than people who spent the majority of the day sitting down. The interesting – and worrying – thing, is that even a good gym session after a day spent sitting around seemed unable to offset the damage done.
The trick? Well, apparently it's finding opportunities to get up on a regular basis and pace around while at work.
Extra points if you can do some walking in the great outdoors, too.
Support your exercise routine with an appropriate diet
Whatever the form of exercise routine you're going to be doing, you're going to find it much more difficult to stick with – and potentially impossible to benefit from – unless you support it with the right nutrition plan.
Understand, for example, that if your goal is to lose weight, it's just about impossible to do that with exercise alone. Diet has to come into the picture.
Even aside from weight loss, however, the intensity of your workouts will affect how many calories you need to consume, and what ratios of different nutrients you need in order to feel your best. If in doubt, emphasize a natural, tasty, whole foods diet.
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