To ensure optimal health, your dietary changes need to be coupled with an exercise program because of their synergistic relationship.  That is, 1+1 does not =2, but 1+1=4, when proper nutrition is supplemented with physical activity. 

Alone, physical activity will provide you with many benefits, such as improving your immune system, increasing muscle strength and conditioning, increasing bone, ligament and tendon strength, improving blood circulation, mental alertness, physical appearance, flexibility, balance, coordination, posture, and vigor.  Moreover, an exercise program may reduce your risk for or alleviate depression, heart disease, high blood pressure, breast cancer, anxiety, low-back pain, prostate cancer, type II diabetes, gastrointestinal bleeding, osteoporosis, arthritis, stroke and the list goes on. 

So why don’t we exercise more?  Do we not understand its benefits?  Over 50% of all adults in the United States are either overweight or obese, up from 25% in 1980.  As we enter the age of convenience, where the only muscles we use are in our fingers and our jaws, defining an exercise program is essential to ensure that you receive the health benefits listed previously.  Something is better than nothing.  10 minutes here, 10 minutes there will do wonders for your health.  So take a moment to figure out how you can increase the physical activity in your life in order to reap the rewards of exercise.

Often you will hear that low-intensity exercise burns the most fat.  Therefore, individuals seeking to shed a few extra pounds will participate in a low-intensity exercise program like walking.  But does the type of exercise matter?  Are people that engage in high-intensity exercise (which burns very little fat, mostly carbohydrate) not going to lose weight?  Whether the energy you burned came from fat or carbohydrate, the bottom line is that you burned calories, and they need to be replaced, either by eating, or by your body releasing its stores, such as fat or glycogen.

 A study indicated that people that participated in high-intensity exercise had less body fat than those who participated in a low-intensity exercise program.  This was then followed up by dividing participants into two training groups: an endurance group that trained for 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week and a high intensity group that did interval training on a cycle where they would go as hard as they could for a short time then rest, then go, then rest, etc.  At the end of five weeks, the participants in the high intensity group had a 3X greater fat loss than the participants in the endurance program. (Metabolism 1994:43:814-818)  Therefore, individuals interested in losing weight should not only engage in endurance activity, but should also supplement it with high-intensity interval training.