How Exercise Can Reduce and Prevent Obesity

There’s a lot more to exercising than just going to the gym for an hour every day or two to try and burn off calories. Exercising covers a massive range of different things you can do to make sure that you’re doing what’s best and what works for you. This includes how exercising can change your attitudes and your mindset, as well as your body, to help reduce and prevent obesity.

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• Prevention
• Reduction

Prevention

There are a huge number of different ways you can make positive changes in your life to try and prevent obesity for yourself and those around you too. Small changes in your daily life can have a dramatic impact on your future, and this is as good a time as any to realise what those can be. Here are a couple of ways you can help prevent obesity for yourself and others in the years to come.

Encourage Kids to Exercise

Firstly, the best possible way to prevent the growth of obesity is to support the younger generation in living healthy lifestyles. Even though children already do physical education in school, there are a number of things you can do to help out even more. The habits children get into in early life and even their teenage years can have a crucial impact on their whole life. Make sure you’re doing all that you can be.

It doesn’t have to be just encouraging them to do more extra circular activities, either. Encouraging even weekend or weekday activities like team sports is always a popular choice for kids because of the different aspects it has. They can be a part of something bigger than themselves and let out their competitive side, and still have fun while they are doing it. It will probably encourage and improve their social attitudes as well, making it even better.

Outside of sports, though, you can just encourage more simple attitude changes like going out to play with friends rather than spending their time indoors or playing video games. The smallest changes, like walking places instead of driving, for example, can make a massive difference to their and your health. Start small.

Exercise in Everyday Life

Sticking with the theme of incorporating exercise into daily life, there are ways you can do it for yourself and your friends. We really can’t stress enough how positive these changes can really be for you. The world health organisation encourages 150 minutes of light exercise a week. There are so many different ways that you can fit this time into your life that you might not have even thought about. It doesn’t have to be as hard as you might think.

Some of the more convenient ways that you can do this is to add exercise into the things that you’re already doing on a daily basis. Cycling or walking to work, for example, can be an amazing way to get yourself in shape rather than just sitting in your car stuck in traffic. The outdoors can help your mindset, too, as you get some fresh air and time to yourself to think and enjoy the experience.

It can also be a good idea to find something that you enjoy as part of an exercise routine that can easily fit into your everyday life. The addition of a home gym can make it extremely efficient to get into good, healthy habits from the comfort of your own time in an enjoyable way. Once it becomes normal to do, it’s easy to find yourself being fitter naturally without having to make any drastic changes to your exercise routine in the future and keeping yourself in peak shape.

Reduction

Exercise can be a good way to reduce obesity levels that are already present as well as prevent it. More movement and encouraging a healthy lifestyle are both huge factors in changing people’s way of life and cementing better habits for themselves and their loved ones.

Cardio & Strength Training

To reduce obesity as well as prevent it, it’s a good idea to get into a good training routine too. Finding the right balance of different exercises and even different routines can be the difference between failure and making a long-lasting and positive change.

Depending on fitness levels, people worrying or already living with obesity may need to start smaller with some light or moderate cardio. This is the best way to make sure that you are doing something that you are capable of and have a huge list of options available to you. Walking, swimming, and light aerobics are often the best places to start, as they all allow you to go at your own speed without putting too much stress on your body and still raising your heart rate.

Once you do feel confident enough, though, the best way to train to try and lose weight is to use a wide range of techniques, including strength and resistance training. The inclusion of muscle-building exercises results in calories being burned continuously even after the workout is over, which is something cardio can’t. Doing this is likely the most effective way to reach your goal, as well as diet improvements.

Attitude Changes

Exercising regularly also has a lot of mental benefits. Positive action is a great way to help keep motivated and feel good about making a change for the better. The more you do it, the better you feel, which leads to a continually improving attitude to helping you feel good inside and out.

There are a lot of different reasons why this happens and how each different reason affects you. In the short term, your exercise releases chemicals in the brain which make you feel happier and healthier and will stay with you for the whole day. It’s this that makes you want to keep up your progress and helps you get into a healthy mindset long-term too!

Other aspects like self-satisfaction are out there, too, though. Being able to decide to do something productive and stick with it over time gives a great deal of pride in your ability. You accomplish small goals every time you go in the hope of reaching somewhere even better the day after. As long as you set yourself realistic and sustainable targets, you’ll continue to progress slowly but surely to a happier, healthier you.

Before beginning any exercise or nutrition program, consult your physician, doctor or other professional. This is especially important for individuals over the age of 35 or persons with pre-existing health problems. Exercise.co.uk assumes no responsibility for personal injury or property damage sustained using our advice.

If you experience dizziness, nausea, chest pain, or any other abnormal symptoms, stop the workout at once and consult a physician or doctor immediately.