The role of physical exercise
Taking up physical activity is a very important element of a healthy lifestyle. Regular exercise of sports protects against many diseases, especially obesitywhich often leads to heart disease, which is one of the most common direct causes of mortality, not only in our country but also around the world. Additionally, regular physical activity protects you from being uncontrolled weight gain while on a diet. The role of exercise is illustrated by the comparison of the weight of sedentary people compared to active people. The latter, as a rule, weigh less statistically. In addition, when it comes to women around 30 – they can afford to take on average 450 more calories during the day, which will not cause weight gain.
The limit of health
Sometimes the line between optimal exercise and excessive exercise becomes blurred, leading to many diseases. Most often they are it’s an eating disorder, such as anorexia or bigorexia. Especially the latter disorder is associated with excessive preoccupation with physical exercise, which is reflected in inadequate assessment of your own muscles and perception of your body as insufficiently muscular, and the whole figure as excessively weak or weak. This disease mainly affects men. In an eating disorder, physical activity increases compulsive form, it means that the desire to practice is difficult or even (in the person’s feeling) impossible to control.
Why do we exercise excessively?
We often do not notice that the physical activity performed is excessive. How to distinguish when it is still healthy and when the limit of the norm has been exceeded? The most important thing is to ask yourself: Why do I exercise so much / often / intensively? Of course, the motivation of athletes practicing sports professionally, dealing with it professionally, is understandable and natural .. It is worth looking at your own motivation. An indicator that excessive exercise may start to worry is certainly the situation when we exercise not for pleasure or health, but when the goal is to impress someone, attract someone’s attention, improve our self-esteem, and also the appearance of the so-called magical thinkingthat having a beautiful, athletic figure will change your whole life for the better. Of course, these goals can be achieved indirectly, but an emergency situation is when these causes are the only motive, and additionally when there is compulsive urge performing a given activity, e.g. in the form of the thought that if I do not do the exercises 100 times – I will certainly gain weight.
What’s the norm?
The ideal situation is when we spend approx 30 minutes a day. It should be moderate. This makes it possible to eat Fr. 15% more calories per day without fear of weight gain. It is worth remembering that too intense exercise performed for more than 1,5 hours during the day may even lead to a weakening of the immune system, which is detrimental to health.
So let’s remember about benefits resulting from practicing sports, take care to ensure physical activity and keep a healthy line between health and disease.