Thursday, July 19, 2007

When you are not fit by Kaylie Hong

Five reasons for not being fit.

What will happen to you if you do not exercise? What is your level of health and fitness when you age and remain inactive? Let's take a look at the typical aging sedentary person.

Here are five possible

1. Cardiovascular Fitness For your car to work well, you have to run it regularly. Well, your body works in the same way. Your heart is a muscle just like any other muscles. If you condition your heart, it becomes a strong pump. Therefore when you are resting, your heart does not have to beat very quickly. An Olympics-level athlete can have a resting heart rate of 30 beats per minute.

But if you do not condition the heart, it becomes a weaker and less efficient pump. As a result, a weak heart has to pump more times per minute. A sedentary individual can have a resting heart rate of 80, 90 or 100 beats per minute. That's up to 70 more beats per minute than the heart of a highly trained athlete. Imagine any piece of equipment or machinery -- if you have to use it more often, the chance for wear and tear and breakdown is greater. You can clearly see why people who are sedentary often experience more significant problems with their hearts.

2. Muscle Tissue As you age you can expect to experience 33 per cent reduction in muscle fibers over your lifetime. One-third of your muscle mass is loss! Women, who are sedentary, can experience an even more significant loss. By the time she is 80, she will have only about a third of the muscle mass she had at 40. This equates to an average individual losing approximately three kilograms of muscle each decade. Your muscle loss will accelerate after age 45.

This significant loss of muscle mass can lead to numerous other negative health factors and thus simultaneously can lead to many complications.

3. Metabolic Rate Muscle tissue is energy-burning tissue. It is estimated that if you add about half a kilogram of muscle to your body, you will burn an additional 30 to 40 calories per day. When you start to lose muscle, it negatively impacts your resting metabolic rate and you start to burn fewer calories every day. This means that, as you age, you can expect a two per cent reduction in metabolic rate each decade. This results in reduced caloric requirements which mean that your body will need fewer calories per day. But most of us do not change our eating habits and diet. Therefore, this can lead to creeping obesity, a phenomenon most aging adult will experience.

4. Body Fat Creeping obesity means you can expect to experience an average weight gain of 4.5 kilograms per decade as you age into your seventies. We already discussed the fact that as you age you begin to lose muscle mass. So if you are losing muscle weight but gaining total body weight, where is all that extra weight coming from? You guessed it -- body fat! The average woman body fat as a proportion of her total body mass will increase from 25 per cent to 43 per cent as she ages, and a man's will increase from 18 per cent to 38 per cent. This increases the risk for obesity-related disorders such as hypertension, diabetes, osteoarthritis and coronary artery disease. Increased fatness triples the normal risk of heart disease and stroke.

5. Strength As you can imagine, a loss in muscle strength is a direct result of the loss in muscle mass that occurs as you age. At about the age of 50, strength starts to decrease so significantly those older adults in their seventies and eighties can expect to have only 50 per cent of the strength of young adults. This decline in strength is linked with increased risk of falls, increased frailty and loss of functional independence.

That was depressing. I hope these points will inspire you to embark on a fitness program.

About the Author

Is there anything else you want to find out how to build up your fitness? When you regularly exercise and eat a healthy diet, you will live healthier, happier and longer.

For more informations visit http://www.HealthFitnessSecret.com


Side Note: Take the first step now

No comments: