Saturday, June 10, 2006

The BEST Exercise You Can Do!

This Is It: WALK
From Netscape

Walk briskly for 12 miles a week or about 125 minutes to 200 minutes a week to improve your aerobic fitness and lower your risk for developing heart disease. When it comes to improving your heart health, it's how much you exercise rather than how hard you do it. Here's the best news of all: Exhaustive amounts of exercise are not needed for heart health, reports Reuters of a new study from Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.Faithfully exercising most days of the week is easier said than done. How do you motivate yourself to exercise? Share your tips and tricks in the Health and Fitness Community.The study: While doctors have long known that people who are fit have better heart health, the connection between the amount and intensity of exercise and heart health has not been as clear. In this study, 133 overweight and sedentary men and women were randomly assigned to do one of the following for seven to nine months:--No exercise.--Walking 12 miles a week.--Jogging 20 miles a week.The volunteers continued to eat their regular diet without any changes.Find out why walking may be the best exercise you can do.The results: Those who exercised, whether it was walking or jogging, showed improvement in peak oxygen consumption and time to exhaustion, which are measurements of fitness; however, the volunteers who jogged 20 miles a week were no more "fit" than those who walked 12 miles a week. The walkers improved their fitness, but they did not lose weight. "People need to know: Even without losing weight, you are getting significant benefits by exercising--you're improving your fitness level, decreasing fat and increasing muscle and improving your lipid panel--so don't stop exercising," researcher Brian D. Duscha told Reuters. "The other thing to realize is that people gain three to four pounds a year, so exercise is really important for weight maintenance."What's the worst exercise for weight loss? Click here to find out--and why it can so easily derail your best intentions to shed pounds.Still, if you increase the amount of exercise by walking 20 miles a week while maintaining the same intensity, you'll reap even more cardiovascular benefits. "Anything beyond walking briskly for 12 miles per week, whether increasing your intensity or the amount of miles, has additional benefits," Duscha told Reuters. "So there is a separate and combined effect." The study findings were published in the journal CHEST.People who are successful at exercising have a secret that makes it work! Click to find out what it is.

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