Exercise works wonders to keep us healthy and strong. Sometimes, books and exercise programs give the impression that exercise is always fun and convenient. That certainly has not been my experience and maybe it has not been yours either. Whether you like it or not, exercising is an essential part of good health and a good life. It does so much to help us look great and feel great. There’s simply no substitute for it.
Some people think they must go to a gym and work out with weights or expensive machines in order to exercise, but that is not true. There are many different ways to get exercise, including participating in active sports. Bike riding, running, and swimming are all great exercises. If you enjoy working out at a gym or having one in your home, go for it. But if you don’t, then realize that gyms do not have a monopoly on exercise. There are many ways to get good exercise and most do not cost a lot of money, require special equipment, or cause you to have to rearrange your schedule. I know that if I am going to exercise every day, it must be something I can look forward to doing. I do work out at the gym and I have a trainer because I have found that works best for me. Knowing I have an appointment with someone three days a week helps me not to put it off until another time.
I also love walking in good weather. That not only gives me the cardiovascular workout essential for long life, it is also a great time to pray; it helps me feel more energetic throughout the day; and it does wonders for my stress level. In addition, I generally make sure I move a lot. I would not call myself “restless,” but I do realize the importance of being mobile and I move around as often as possible. Regular exercise is a commitment and it takes time, but the benefits are well worth the effort. I began a regular exercise program seven years ago and have experienced tremendous benefits. I am smaller, and I have more energy, more stamina, and more muscle. I have even seen improvements in my skin tone. Exercise helps me mentally and it just feels good to know that I am investing in my health. Dave has been working out for more than 50 years. He is now 73 years old and looks absolutely amazing and has the energy of a much younger person.
I encourage you to begin now to incorporate exercise into your daily routine. The sooner you start, the sooner you can enjoy the positive changes exercise will bring to your health and to your life.
Once I started exercising, I quickly realized its benefits. I believe the same will be true for you. In addition to “traditional” exercise, you can also make an effort to keep your body active in as many small ways as possible. Remember that little things do add up! Just think about these things: If it’s feasible, walk to a friend’s house instead of driving. Use a push mower instead of a riding mower. If you work at a computer all day, get up and take regular breaks. If you want to go shopping, park at the opposite end of the mall from your favorite store and walk through the mall to get there.
I have handheld exercise balls on the couch in my office, and I also have a huge exercise ball nearby. Every so often I get up from my desk and bounce on the ball for five minutes. That gets my blood flowing, loosens my spine, and gives me a break from work, which is so important. I have found these balls to be very helpful and easy to use; you might want to try them too.
We need to make every effort to stay as active as we can. Short breaks and forced “inconveniences” in our days are necessary because we use our bodies so little these days. We have an abundance of appliances we can operate with only the push of a button. Very few of us have jobs that involve exercise and many of our leisure activities are spent with our feet up. This is a relatively new development in our culture and a dangerous one. Human beings were made to exercise. Our bodies are fit together with joints because God expects us to move a lot!
I admit, we do not read much in the Bible about Noah’s workout routine or Moses’ Pilates session. Does that mean people during Bible times did not get much exercise? Not at all! Everything they did involved exercise. Before automobiles, electricity, and machines, everything in the world ran on human power or animal power. If you wanted to get somewhere, you walked. If you needed to take something with you, you carried it. You did laundry by hand, chopped your own firewood, and milled your own grain. This physically active lifestyle may be one reason for the incredible longevity of biblical characters.
The best exerciser of all may have been Jesus. He routinely walked from His home in Galilee to Jerusalem—a distance of about 120 miles! Over the course of His ministry, He must have walked thousands of miles. In Jesus’ day, people thought little of walking 10 miles to get somewhere. And because they walked such distances all their lives, their bodies were able to do that kind of exercise with ease. When I was in Moscow one time, I noticed that an unusually high number of the people I saw were slender. When I asked why, I was informed that most of them did not have cars and had to walk everywhere they went. So much daily walking definitely helps keep weight off and muscles strong.
Even as recently as the 1920s, people in American towns and cities walked an average of about two miles to work and school. Those walks alone burned around 200 calories per day, which is worth about 20 pounds a year in lost weight. When our society traded in daily walks for the convenience of automobiles, we did not realize we were setting ourselves up to gain 20 pounds in the process.
But weight loss is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the positive results of exercise. Yes, exercise will help you lose weight and look your best, but there are so many health benefits from regular exercise that go beyond the value of looks. Getting in shape for show is kind of like buying a new refrigerator because you like its color. That is a fine reason, but you may come to love its great new super-efficiency and extra-long warranty even more. And you can get those same things for your body through exercise. Other than not smoking, nothing can improve your health more.
Exercise is truly a “magic bullet.” Just a few of the health conditions you can help prevent through exercise include arthritis, asthma, osteoporosis, stroke, Alzheimer’s, depression, and gastrointestinal ills. If you exercise, you are also likely to get fewer colds, feel less stress, and better manage the stress you do feel. You will have less fat and more muscle, better tone and straighter posture, which means you will look great too.
Some common and serious diseases exercise may help you avoid include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer or other conditions affecting the immune system. Let me explain.
Energy for exercise depends on getting enough oxygen and fuel to your muscles. Both of these things take place through an intricate process in the body and are accomplished through the bloodstream. Blood is your body’s transportation network, and your heart drives it. As your demand for fuel and air increases, your heart pumps faster and faster, speeding the blood along on its important delivery route. The blood vessels that feed your exercising muscles dilate too, so they can carry more blood to the places that need it.
Regular exercise as simple as walking a couple of miles most days can cut your risk of heart disease and stroke in half! The best way to prevent these and other forms of cardiovascular disease is steady, moderate exercise, which keeps your blood vessels wide and clear and your heart strong.
The way the body breaks down sugar helps your muscles get the energy they need. Diabetes is a sugar disease caused by high levels of glucose (a type of sugar) in the blood. These high levels are the result of a diet high in fat, sugars, and starches, along with a sedentary lifestyle. You might think a lot of glucose would be a good thing—more energy—but elevated glucose levels over a long time cause lots of problems.
To understand this better, let me explain how glucose works in the body with insulin. Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas and it acts like a key to “unlock” muscles so they will receive and absorb glucose. The more glucose people have in their blood, the more insulin they need. Eventually the muscles get stuffed and resist insulin’s “unlocking” function. This is called “insulin resistance,” and it sets in motion a process that ultimately results in diabetes.
A steady exercise program reduces your chances of developing diabetes by nearly two-thirds. Combined with a healthy diet low in sugars, starches, and saturated fat, it makes your risk of diabetes negligible. For people who already have diabetes, no amount of exercise will reverse the disease, but it will help control glucose levels and allow these people to take as little insulin as possible.
The connection between exercise and cancer prevention is not as direct as that between exercise and reduced cardiovascular disease or diabetes. Exercise has little impact on some cancers, yet it reduces the risk of breast cancer by 37% and provides similar protection against prostate and colon cancer. It does this by stimulating your immune system. Your immune defense, centered in the lymphatic system, circulates white blood cells through the body, where they find and eliminate cellular threats such as bacteria, viruses, and cancer cells. Unlike blood, which is pumped through the body by the heart, lymph depends on muscle contractions to squeeze it through the body. Moderate exercise more than doubles the rate at which your lymph circulates. The faster those white blood cells move, the more cancer cells and viruses they can pick off.
I hope you have learned in this key how much exercise can do to improve and preserve your health, and I hope you are ready to begin an exercise program you can stick with for years to come.
1. Take a Walk—Daily
Experts once thought people had to work up a good sweat in order to gain health benefits from exercise. They viewed walking as a fine way to take a break, but thought real exercise meant running, aerobic workouts, or other intense sports. As it turns out, that is not true. Researchers now know that most of the health benefits of exercise come from activities as simple as 30 minutes of walking every day. More intense exercise will burn more calories and cause a person to lose more weight, but will not increase longevity or do much to prevent disease.
Thirty minutes of walking means about two miles at a standard walking pace. It’s not necessary to start out doing this much. If 15 minutes leaves you gasping, that is good enough as a starting place. Work your way up to 30 minutes at least five days a week. Eventually, two miles may seem too easy to you, so try pushing your distance up to three miles or do two miles at a faster pace. Keep yourself mildly challenged. Feel free to walk longer than 30 minutes if you can, though most people find that half an hour is all they can devote to exercise on a busy day. If you would like to use a book for guidance, try Dr. Don Colbert’s Walking in Divine Health.
2. Exercise Indoors
I’m an outdoor walker. I love the chance to experience the day and the changing seasons from a path or a fairway. Thankfully, I live in a place where I can do this. But some people find it too hard to maintain an outdoor exercise program year-round. In Florida, summer walks are unbearable. In Michigan, winter walks require bundling up in coats and boots and dodging ice patches. But in many areas, local malls or community centers offer indoor walking programs that allow people to walk on perfectly level surfaces in comfortable, consistent temperatures, at little or no cost. This makes walking especially easy.
No matter where they live, many people are most comfortable exercising in the privacy of their own homes, using workout videos. Many classic aerobics videos are available. If these seem too strenuous for you, you might try a video that combines walking in place with simple strength training moves designed to give you an all-over workout.
If you like classes, you can find a variety of classes on everything from basic aerobics to water aerobics to spinning in almost every city and town. Whatever your preference, there is a program for you. Don’t let the fact that you may live in a place where outdoor activity is not always possible stop you from exercising.
3. Build Your Strength
Aerobic exercises such as walking or biking burn calories, improve cardiovascular function, and keep you upbeat emotionally, but they do not provide much help to fight osteoporosis in the upper body. That requires quick, intense muscle work such as weight lifting, strength training, and sit-ups. The great thing about strength training programs is that they can be done at home with minimal equipment. Many books and videos are available to help you learn how to gain strength. Find one that fits your needs, and keep your bones and muscles strong.
4. Run or Ride a Bike
Some people do not enjoy walking. If you know you need exercise, but also know you will not stay enthusiastic about it unless you are moving faster than you can move while walking, I suggest running or biking. A lot of people love biking and it is much easier on the joints than running is. Cities and towns are much better now than they once were about maintaining bike lanes and bike paths. You may find that quite a few errands you now do by car can be accomplished on a bicycle. If you try this, you’ll find you can exercise and run many of your errands all at the same time.
5. Swim
Some people have physical challenges that make walking or biking difficult or impossible. For these people, and for others, swimming is a great alternative. Many city pools or other facilities offer water aerobics classes or opportunities to swim laps, which is one of the healthiest activities you can do. Swimming takes all the weight off of your body, which means it does not put pressure on your joints. It also works many different muscle groups and provides a gentle cardiovascular workout without joint or bone stress. Indoor pools make swimming a convenient option year-round.
Which of the five actions in this key will you take in order to incorporate a consistent exercise program into your life as you move toward greater health? Write them down, commit to them, and start today.