The Hidden Benefits of Physical Activity
My experience with physical activity
In one of the last blog posts I talked about the concept of “Calories In, Calories Out” and how simplified it is compared to all the complexity that is our system of absorbing and consuming calories.
One of the points I talked about was how Activity Energy Expenditure (AEE), which has as main factors that we spend doing physical exercise (EEE) and our daily expenditure doing activities without being exercise (NEAT). AEE represents about 10–30% of the total number of calories expended. Since the biggest slice of the “Calories spent” cake is what we spend when we are at rest (BMR — Basal metabolic rate), why do we talk so much about the benefits of physical exercise? What are the benefits that we will have to exercise if it is not to lose weight or get muscular?
And these are the benefits of physical exercise …
What science says …
Yes, the list is long.
Making your heart more efficient (increases the circulation of oxygen and nutrients to the tissues). Increases good cholesterol (HDL) and decreased bad cholesterol (LDL) and triglycerides. Decreases blood pressure
Support your metabolism. Helps you to go to the lard regularly. Support your gut health (which is already known as the “second brain”)
- Increases insulin sensitivity, helping the body to clean glucose efficiently. This study shows that, even with no weight loss, insulin sensitivity improves.
- Strengthens the immune system, making fewer cells that cause inflammation.
- Increases muscle strength, increasing lean mass and metabolism (BMR — Basal metabolic rate)
- Improves the functioning of muscles, coordination that can help in reducing chronic pain.
- Balance exercises help to have more perception of our body in space
- Help with energy levels
- It can improve sex life
- Respiratory system
Your lungs become stronger. Especially with aerobic exercises (cardio) it helps your body use oxygen and removes carbon dioxide more efficiently. Over the years our body stops using oxygen so efficiently, physical exercise can slow this trend down. The decrease in VO2 makes your body unable to deliver oxygen in the most efficient way to your entire body, including your brain. This can to cause the fibres of white matter to be lost, imagine this as the millions of connections that exist in your brain. Increases the amount of oxygen.
Balance and strength exercises reduce the probability of falling and the fractures that result from them. Strength and endurance exercises can prevent loss of bone mass (such as walking on the street or mountain, tennis, dancing or lifting weights). Our bones start to become weaker over the years (they reach the peak of density and strength around 30 years old), the practice of physical exercise can serve to minimize this degradation.
- The brain constantly requires oxygen and other chemicals, supplied by blood vessels. Physical exercise, and other simple activities like washing dishes or vacuuming, helps the circulation of nutrient-rich blood efficiently and at the same time keeps blood vessels healthy.
- Exercise increases the creation of mitochondria, the cellular structures that generate and maintain our energy, both in the muscles and in the brain, which may explain the mental advantage that we often experience after a workout.
- This and this study also showed that increasing heart rate increases neurogenesis in adults, the ability to develop new brain cells. Yes, you read well, studies indicate that physical exercise can make your brain grow. This happens mostly with aerobic exercises (cardio). This is due to the increase in the BDNF protein (Brain-derived neurotropic growth factor) which in addition to promoting neurogenesis, improves the functional connections between areas of the brain. Imagining a company, it is as if you have new people to help and the communication between the various areas of the company becomes more efficient. These growth factors can also cause new blood vessels to be created.
- It can help you to be more successful in a new task, either motor or cognitive.
- This study also concluded that the risk of death from various risk factors is lower with increasing physical exercise.
The hidden benefits of physical exercise …
What made me start to practice more regularly was to enjoy doing it. I went to try CrossFit with a friend and I loved the feeling of having given everything I had.
I always wanted to put on weight but when I started training I just tried it out. But as I enjoyed the class, I kept going. I was not focusing on the goal of gaining weight, but I was concentrating on the process. When you see the evolution of starting to put more weight on some exercise or start to make a movement that you couldn’t do. It does not mean that I like all classes, that I am always motivated and that classes do not cost me. It does mean that I like most classes, that even when I have no motivation I know that at the end of the training I will feel spectacular, even though during the training it costs me.
- Begin to understand the importance of enjoying the process and not focusing too much on the goal. CrossFit works with me, but it’s important to be open-minded to experiment with various things until you find what you like.
During training, I would never know if I was increasing my Personal Record in any exercise if I didn’t try to put on more weight or try to do some exercise. I had to accept that I could fail in order to “beat my record”.
- Recognize that failure is a normal step towards success.
At CrossFit, there are workouts that are to try to find out the maximum weight you can put on doing a certain exercise. As a rule, when we do this, we will increase the weight so that we don’t do too much weight right away. It happened more than once, I know that I had already done an exercise with a certain weight and that day I couldn’t do it, either because I was more tired, or because I hadn’t done that specific exercise in a while, or for another reason.
- Knowing how to accept that every day is different and that although it is important to understand whether you are improving or not, it is more important to perceive the positive or negative trend than properly seeing the improvements or worsens day by day.
- Have compassion of your own to accept failure as a learning experience.
Throughout my adolescence and early adulthood I had no confidence in myself, which meant that I did not speak even when I wanted to do it. With the physical changes in my body because I was starting to gain muscle, and psychological because I saw that my training was improving, my confidence increased. I still have a shy personality but, I already have a lot more confidence in me to speak. Just as it is contagious for example to see someone yawning and then to yawn too, trust is the same.
- Increased confidence in ourselves in various areas
Since 2018, more or less, one of my CrossFit goals was to do HSPU (Handstand Push Up or Push-Ups). However, I had never even managed to do the handstand, let alone push-ups. As in training you have a pre-defined training, it is not always easy to train this until it has reached quarantine. Since it was something I could train at home, I just needed a wall, so I decided to start trying. For 2 weeks every day after working I tested 10 minutes. He was filming, so he could try to understand what he was doing wrong. I searched on Google “What are the main mistakes to make HSPU”, I was making them all initially now. After many attempts there I managed to do it.
- Realize that consistency is needed when you want to do something.
As I practice a sport that despite not being a team, classes are in groups and during classes it is very normal for people to push you, even if they do not know you. Either to put on more weight or to count your repetitions or simply to say “Come on, it will be soon, you can do it”.
- I started to give more value to the importance of support and a community.
- I stopped associating physical exercise only with weight loss or increased muscle because I started to feel all the physical and mental benefits when I started to practice regularly.
And these are the harms of the practice of physical exercise …
Nothing ….
Now seriously, the benefits of regular exercise far outweigh the harm.
The only question is that we have to know how to listen to our body, we cannot want to go from 8 to 800 from one day to the next. For people who don’t usually train and who have a health problem like heart disease, take it easy. Don’t start by wanting to run a half-marathon right away. But this works with everything in life, people who have had some kind of injury, for example breaking a foot, do physiotherapy to adapt the foot to walking and do everything that is basic, and then yes, to be able to slowly return to training .
We are all different, we have to have an open mind on the one hand to try new things and on the other hand to know how to recognize the signals that our body gives us (obviously knowing that feeling tired during a workout is normal, and feeling muscle pain after a day of training is also normal).
Final thoughts
Physical exercise has immense benefits, these can vary depending on the type of exercise, the frequency with which you practice, the specific characteristics of yourself, etc. But regardless of the extent of the benefits, these will always be there, and are not at all just related to weight loss or muscle gain.
Some benefits demonstrated by the science of physical exercise in the short / medium term …
- It leads to increased blood circulation to the brain which improves cardiovascular function, can lower blood pressure, lower bad cholesterol, etc.
- Causes the brain to produce growth factors that can lead to the production of new cells in the brain and new blood vessels, leading to increased cognitive function, memory, etc.
In the long term…
- Delaying the inevitable consequences of ageing (I mean inevitable with the information I have) through, for example, the more efficient use of oxygen by our lungs, can prevent the loss of bone mass.
- By increasing the production of growth factors, such as BDNF, increases the connections in our brain, decreasing the risk of Alzheimer.
I know that today I mentioned a thousand studies, but I will leave only one more that I loved reading because it clearly shows that it is never too late to start, it was done with people aged 87–96 years, the average was 90 years. This concluded after 8 weeks and resistance training, these increased the strength of the muscles in the quadriceps area and in the thighs, to improve the resistance to walking, climbing steps and balance.
If I started to practice gaining weight, at this point I continue to do it for all the other benefits that I saw in me. Increased confidence because I feel better when I see myself in the mirror because I am able to run faster, get more weight, make a certain movement that I always thought I would not be able to do, etc. This increase in confidence was contagious for other areas outside physical exercise. Once you start to see success around physical exercise, it is easy to start thinking “Who is going to stop me now?”
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