1. Fitness

Exercising makes you fit. Being fit, we have more physical and mental resistance, meaning we will be less ill and if we get ill we will recover more quickly.

As more oxigen rich blood streams quicker through our veins and brains, we increase our learning and cognitive abilities.

Being fit myself, I enjoy every walk and every bicycle ride, no matter how long or how hard it is. Of course I get tired frequently, but that feeling is very different from doing a physical effort when being unfit. I remember some rare occasions when I had to walk or run when being not fit. It felt unpleasant from the very beginning.

2. Feel Extremely Good

After a good work-out, you will feel extremely good and satisfied. It is well know that during physical effort, the body releases the hormone dopamine, which gives you the feeling of pleasure and happiness.

3. Strength

Exercising makes you stronger. That’s a big bonus, as any physical effort will be easier when you are stronger. Walking up the stairs, lifting the bag with groceries, anything you do will be easier and sometime effortless.

4. Muscle Building and Maintenance

During exercising you use your muscles and you will actually damage them. That damage is a good thing, as your body will repair the damaged muscles with new, more and stronger cells.

During the rest period between training sessions, your body builds your muscles. That does not happen during the training.

After about 2 weeks without exercising, your body starts breaking down your muscles. “If you don’t use them, you’ll lose them”.

5. Weight Loss and Weight Control

Exercising helps you losing weight. You burn more calories. If you are on a diet to lose weight, exercising makes you lose weigth a little faster.

6. Cardio Vascular System

During exercising, your muscles need more fuel and more oxigen to deliver the required energy. The higher the energy need, the more blood must be pumped through your vessels.

The blood pick up oxigen from the lungs and glycogen (sugars) from the intestin and to transport it to your muscles. Your heart and arteries need to work harder to increase the blood flow. This is what keeps them healthy and clean.

7. Strong Bones

Exercising, and running in particular, makes your bones stronger, because your working muscles and the impact puts them under pressure.

8. Motivation and Energy

The more you exercise, the fitter you feel and the easier it gets to perform at a certain level. With the increased endurance, you get more energy, you can go on for longer and probably faster, feeling less tired.

This sensation motivates you to continue exercising frequently and it also motivates to do other things in your life like working and socializing.

9. Brain Health

Your brain benefits from more energy rich blood that is supplied to it. The brains of children benefit from exercising in particular. Learning is more accelerated from exercising than from taking extra math classes.

In older people, it help to slow down the degeneration of the mind?

10. Stress Reduction

Exercising reduces the production of the stress hormone cortisol. This can be measured with a simple saliva test, available in most drug stores.

In the modern society, many people experience high stress levels, which is not good for our long term health.

11. Resistance

Exercise build resistance against illness, resistance against fatigue and injuries and resistance against mental setbacks.

12. Pain Relief

To combat muscle, tendon and joint pain, painkillers work during a short period only. The non-subscription painkillers have a positive effect during 14 days and thereafter the effectiveness fades out. Prescription painkiller might work a little longer, but their effects are time limited too. The longer one takes them, the more one need to feel the same effect.

Many prescription painkillers are addictive, so it is difficult to get rid of them after having used them for a while.

And all painkillers have negative side effects.

In the most cases, exercising and stretching reliefs pain in the short term and in the long term. If you are not sure, consult your physiotherapist for the most effective exercises to combat your pain and to heal your injury.

13. Fun

Do the exercises that you like, otherwise you will not be able to keep going. If you do not like indoor, go outdoor. If you do not like to do individual endurance sports like running, do a team sport. If you do not to run, walk. Join a walking group, go dancing, golfing, swimming or whatever.

Try something new. These days there are countless possibilities. Go and discover.

Do the things that you like and have fun. The exercising will follow naturally.

I have a lot of fun every day, 3 times at least when I go out with my dog for a walk or a bike ride in the woods or in the fields.

14. Social Interactions

Exercising makes you meet other people. The other dog owner, the team member, the golf partner, the people in your walking group or the people you dance with.

It opens up many ways to make new friends from different backgrounds.

15. Body Posture

A good body posture is important to maintain a healthy body and to avoid injuries later in life. Feet, ankles, knees, hips, back, belly, shoulders, neck and head all need be be kept in a proper position to avoid wear at young and old age.

By exercising you make and keep your muscles strong and flexible, allowing you to keep a correct, elegant and straight body posture.

16. Longivety

Exercising keeps you stronger and healthier for longer. It increases your chances of living more years in good health.

17. Reduce Risk on Cancer

18. Reduce Risk on Diabetes (type 2)

Regular physical exercise reduces insulin resistance, a marker for diabetes type 2.

Insulin is an hormone that is produces by the pancreas and enters our blood stream to move the sugars in our blood into our body cells. With insulin resistance, the cells resists insulin to flow from the blood into the cells and deposit the sugars.

19. Sleep Well

You get physically tired from exercising and your mind will relax. It helps you to take away your focus from your work and other problems. As a result, you might sleep better.

20. A Flexible Body

Exercising helps to make your body and muscles more flexible. Especially stretching exercises at the end of a training session or in a special stretching session are beneficial. They help to speed up the recovery of tired muscles, it helps to evacuate the lactic acid. With a flexible body, you reduce your chances to get injuries.

21. A Good Balance

A good balance is important. When we age, we tend to have more difficulties to keep our balance. The deterioration of our balance is an indicator for aging. Fortunately, we can train ourselves to improve our balance with simple exercises.

To get an indication, you can do this exercise: - stand straight, close your eyes and lift one foot from the floor. Count the number of seconds you can stand on one foot.

22. Good Coordination

This means that your body does what your mind commands it to do. With age, we react more slowly and exercising will help us to keep up to speed. A good coordination between our body parts is essential in daily life.

Heavy people tend to have slower reaction and less coordination as they have to work against the forces of gravity when they get into motion.

23. Joints Maintenance

Your joints need to stay in good condition to. Strong tendons and strong muscles optimally support the joints in a skeleton.

24. Better Results at Work

A healthy mind in a healthy body makes you to work more efficiently and will bring better results.

25. Improved Learning

As the brain gets more energy and oxygen, more brain cells and connections between brain cells are being formed which enhances your cognitive abilities and improves your capacity to remember or store information.

26. A Flexible and Open Mind

When exercising, you will experience difficult moments you have to deal with. Your mind will search for solutions and for possibilities to improve. You will learn that the most difficult situations will come to an end and that you are capable of much more than you can imagine.

27. Appetite for Healthy Food

During your activities you will quickly find out that it takes a lot of energy and frustration to carry excess body weight with you or that it is in the way of the movements the exercises require you to do.

A light person runs up a hill with less resistance. A heavy tennis player moves more slowly towards a ball in the corner of the court.

To improve, most people that exercise on a regular basis go for the more healthy food options without realizing.

Second, once one starts moving more frequently, one finds out that healthier food makes exercising easier and more enjoyable.

28. Being Positive and Optimistic

Exercising makes you feel better and more energetic. The world becomes a more positive place and our fitness helps us to overcome problems easier.

29. Help You Stop Smoking

Smoker quickly find out smoking is holding them back at physical activities. Someone who starts exercising regularly when he or she intents to stop smoking, get an extra and almost instant reward, because the performance improvement of their physical efforts will be strongly improved by not smoking any more.

30. To Reduce your Alcohol Consumption

For alcohol, the same applies as for smoking. Alcohol has a negative impact on your physical and mental performance.

By drinking a few beers after exercising, the positive effects of the effort will be mostly undone. You will notice during exercising the next day.

Personally, I found out I became more sensitive to alcohol the more exercising I did.