Exercise

The importance of exercise for general heath and weight loss cannot be over stated. Getting an adequate amount of aerobic and anaerobic exercise each day is the single best thing you can do to live longer, live healthier, and look attractive. While it is possible to lose some weight without increasing your daily exercise it is not best to do it. Physical activity helps you control your weight by burning excess calories that would otherwise be stored as fat.  Exercise also helps to improve your overall health and prevent many diseases.

Your weight is determined by the number of calories you eat each day minus what your body uses. Everything you eat contains calories, and everything you do uses calories, including sleeping, breathing, and digesting food. Any physical activity in addition to what you normally do will burn those extra calories.

Regular exercise can help prevent:

• Heart disease and stroke. Daily physical activity can help prevent heart disease and stroke by strengthening your heart muscle, lowering your blood pressure, raising your HDL ("good" cholesterol), and lowering LDL cholesterol ("bad" cholesterol), improving blood flow, and increasing your heart's working capacity.
• High blood pressure. Regular exercise reduces blood pressure in people with high blood pressure (hypertension).
• Diabetes. By reducing body fat, physical activity can help to prevent and control type 2 diabetes.
• Back pain. By increasing muscle strength and endurance and improving flexibility and posture, regular exercise can prevent back pain.
• Osteoporosis. Regular weight-bearing exercise promotes bone formation and may prevent many forms of bone loss associated with aging.

Regular physical activity can also improve mood and the way you feel about yourself. Exercise is likely to reduce depression and anxiety and help you to better manage stress.

Anaerobic - Aerobic Exercise

Anaerobic exercise is basically the opposite of aerobic exercise. Anaerobic means "without oxygen," while "aerobic" means "with oxygen." The main difference between aerobic and anaerobic exercise is the duration and intensity level of the activities. Both types of exercise are essential for losing weight, however, so you should try to incorporate both into your physical fitness routine.

Aerobic exercise relies on an increased supply of oxygen through your cardiopulmonary system. Walking, jogging, jumping rope, swimming, running, bicycling, hiking and dancing are all good aerobic exercise.

Unlike aerobic exercise, anaerobic exercise relies on your muscles' strength instead of oxygen flow through your bloodstream. Anaerobic exercise involves high-impact physical activities that demand short spurts of muscle strength. Sprinting and weightlifting are good examples of anaerobic exercise.