The Newest Workout: Why It’s Not Enough

While you’ve been doing what you were doing and wishing you had more energy and stamina to do more of it, dozens of powerful fitness programs have appeared.

What’s happening with you?

Good health and physical fitness are, at their foundation, simple and basic principles. There are no extremes necessary and the time involved is amazingly minimal.

And there are no secrets.

Like any endeavor, the more you learn and practice, the better you will be. But it’s not like attempting brain surgery without practice.

Movement is life. More movement is more life.

Eating more calories than your body can effectively utilize will generally result in accumulation of fat.

If you don’t love yourself enough to care about your good health, the previous two points don’t matter.

You may be disappointed with the brevity of this post.

Don’t be.

If you’re disappointed, get over it and get started by taking the first step – – whatever you can do – – in the direction of your new lifestyle.

Get Started Now,

Steven Siemons

 

The Senior Health and Fitness Blog by Steven Siemons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Your Retirement Account: How Much Is Your Good Health Worth?

You plan diligently for your financial future. You’ve calculated many different scenarios knowing exactly how it will unfold when you retire. Sometimes, however, you still worry about it.

Not only do these concerns naturally occupy our thinking, our perceptions have been unavoidably shaped by the many years of ads that have been poured into our daily existence.

Money is important…very important.

Most Important?

If you have everything, but lack the capacity to enjoy it, what have you accomplished?

Balance and moderation offer a different direction than excess and extreme.

Life is not ‘one size fits all’ because we all thrive on different stimuli. And we each have our own tempo along the way.

The ability to achieve it–whatever it happens to be; and enjoy it, greatly depend on your good health.

That makes it priceless, then, doesn’t it?

That’s really the reason, deep down inside, that you made those resolutions.

To Your Good Health,

Steven

The Senior Health and Fitness Blog by Steven Siemons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Aging, Exercise, and Your Contentment With Life

Looking back on my assumptions about what life would be like in my sixties, I must say that I am pleasantly surprised.

It’s about how great I feel at this age!

When contemplating how I might feel as a senior citizen from the vantage point of my young adult years, I imagined a life lived within the confines of a worn out aching body constantly reminding me of my years.

Thankfully, that just isn’t so!

I share this with you not from a sense of superiority, but with a purpose of encouragement.

It’s not too late to begin your lifestyle journey that includes proper nutrition, exercise, and a focus on wellness.

Challenging the assumption that people over 65 are generally a happy group, a 15 year study just released cites depression as a pervasive reality for many. “Key factors in these increases (of depression) include levels of physical impairment, the onset of medical conditions, particularly chronic ones, and the approach of death.”

(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151113115607.htm)

My emphasis here is on the preventable status of ‘levels of physical impairment’ from which so much misery arises.

Your investment in your physical well being directly effects your happiness!

Contrast that gloomy outlook on living with what proactive looks like in this article from the Washington Post: ‘You can be a high level athlete whether you’re 20 or 70.’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/proof-that-old-age-and-high-level-athleticism-arent-mutually-exclusive/2015/11/10/d7a3c3b8-7cdb-11e5-beba-927fd8634498_story.html

(Please take the time to click on the link above and read it)

Make the decision to take charge of what you can change, and give yourself the gift of better health and more contentment along the way!

To Your Health and Fitness,

Steven Siemons

The Senior Health and Fitness Blog by Steven Siemons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Exercise VS Lifestyle: Which Is More Important?

My efforts over this last year have been to encourage you to embrace a Lifestyle of Health, Fitness, and Wellness. Usually, if someone is an exercise nut like me, he or she has more than a mild interest in healthy lifestyle choices… usually.

Let’s give ourselves a great overview of the big picture by addressing the issue posed in this post’s title: “What if I exercise, but still have a few bad habits that I know I need to change?”

Let’s get started.

The Case For Exercise

Many years ago, I read the following statement, but I don’t remember where: “If the benefits of exercise were available in a pill, it would be the most prescribed medication in the world.”

It made such an impression on me that, although I forgot the source, I never forget the concept.

Some of the health benefits of exercise:

1. It increases heart efficiency http://abcnews.go.com/Health/seconds-exercise-worthwhile-90-minutes/story?id=24759309

2. It is effective in small but consistent doses. Read the article referenced in previous point.

3. Resistance exercise strengthens bones.

http://www.menshealth.com/fitness/don-t-follow-fitness-advice

http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwo8-y3xk

4. Physical activity is a key factor in avoiding Alzheimer’s.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-tiffany-chow/alzheimers-prevention_b_5569094.html

5. Exercise effectively lowers blood sugar.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/la-he-exercise-snack-20140614,0,7189358.story?track=rss

6. A program of regular walking significantly effects symptoms related to peripheral artery disease.

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0E61IN20140526?feedType=RSS&irpc=932

7. Cardiovascular fitness is positively correlated to longevity.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/15/us-elderly-hypertension-fitness-idUSKBN0DV1H820140515?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews

8. Exercise is an effective treatment for anxiety and depression

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1516-44462005000400003&script=sci_arttext&tlng=es

9. Exercise reduces the risk of heart disease.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-single-best-thing-women-can-do-for-their-hearts/

10. Exercise reduces the risk of breast cancer.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/20/291894075/exercise-cuts-breast-cancer-risk-for-all-women-everywhere?ft=3&f=1001

11. Exercise has a profound effect on your brain, including aspects of creativity and reasoning.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fastcompany/headlines/~3/lZ2S8gZJFNQ/the-creative-brain-on-exercise

The Case For Lifestyle

This is really a question of: “How much can I harm myself physically, mentally, and emotionally by making bad lifestyle choices?”

Let’s just use, for example, one behavioral choice and its consequences: smoking. There’s just too much damage being done to multiple organs and body systems to hope that exercise could be sufficient to counteract the effects. And that’s just one behavior. Add a few others like insufficient sleep, poor nutrition, and too much stress, and you begin to see that as important as exercise is, it’s really only one piece of your Wellness puzzle.

There’s no need to tell you what you already know, but I will, nonetheless. Mistreatment of your body does long-term catastrophic damage… much of it taking place that you can’t see or perceive until the damage is already done!

Conclusion:

As powerful and positive as exercise is, it cannot undue all of the major deleterious effects that can result from unhealthy lifestyle choices.

So, the best thing to do right now, is to stop doing the harmful things first.

Make The Decision And Do It Now,

Steven

The Senior Health and Fitness Blog by Steven Siemons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Here’s a collection of over 500 health and fitness articles I’ve saved for you:
http://www.pinterest.com/stevensiemons/the-senior-health-news-board/