Do you have an inactive lifestyle? Clients who come to us after prolonged periods of inactivity are suffering from a number of side effects of having been inactive. The body functions from a principle called specific adaptation of imposed demand. This means that your body will have a direct response from the type of activity or demand that is required of it daily. When you are active your body becomes stronger, and reflects all of the benefits of being healthy and strong. When your body is inactive, however, it will decrease in strength resulting in a chain reaction that leads to poor health. This is a look at the chain reaction that occurs when you are inactive.
The first reaction from you being inactive is loss of strength. When you lose strength, your muscles become softer leading to loss of muscle tone and muscle mass. Your metabolism will also slow down resulting in weight gain because the amount of muscle you have affects the number of calories you burn (metabolism). If you are not watching your food intake you will see a gradual increase in weight that accumulates into large amounts quickly, and it will seem like it happened over night. The loss of strength combined with the extra weight brings on a huge decrease in your energy and a feeling of being exhausted. Once you lose energy you start to become less mobile trying to conserve energy. The less daily activity you have, the more your muscles and tendons will start to shorten and tighten and become achy and stiff. Afterward, you'll get the feeling of being much older than you are, and this can happen even when you are only 25 years old. Getting yourself back into shape will start to slow these changes in your body. Depending on the type of exercise program you start, you will be able to not just slow them down but reverse the changes in your body that occurred while you were inactive. The biggest obstacle most people find when they start exercising is that they are too tired. The catch is that exercising is the only solution that will make you feel more energized. Prolonging the start of this process would make overcoming it much harder later.
AFC writes articles to provide information that motivate you to action. We hope that having a clear understanding of what happens when you have an inactive lifestyle benefits you. You can see that there is a process to losing your health and one to regaining it. We recommend that you start an exercise program at a local gym or hire a personal trainer to assist you. We also offer you tips on how to hire a personal trainer on our home page. If you live in the Santa Monica/Los Angeles area we will be glad to provide you with our unique personal training service.
