THE WORD “fit” is a vague concept. What exactly does it mean? I’ll start by telling you what it doesn’t mean. Fitness is not the absence of illness or disease. If that were true, anyone who seldom saw a doctor would be considered fit even though he could hardly run a block. Contrary, a person seriously ill with cancer can be fit. In fact, fitness improves your chances in battling any disease.
What then is fitness? Total fitness is an integrated state of body and mind. What affects you physically will affect you emotionally; likewise, what affects you emotionally will affect you physically. A severely depressed person, for example, shuffles slowly, head bowed, shoulders slumped–a body seemingly devoid of energy. His body reflects his mood. But it’s not one-way street; the mind also responds to the body. Having your movements restricted for even less than a day would make you feel downcast or depressed.
The same& nbsp; true when your body is weak and inflexible. Equally important is that positive changes in your physical condition improve your emotional state, just as positive emotions improve your physical condition.
The mind and body are one.
To be mentally fit, you must be resilient to stress and have a healthy attitude. A healthy attitude is the most powerful component in its ability to influence all aspects of your life. To be physically fit, you must have all three components: cardiovascular endurance, muscular fitness and a good nutritional status. I will explain this three components.
Cardiovascular endurance
Cardio endurance is the ability of your heart, lungs, and blood vessels to supply your body, especially your working muscles with oxygen. Though each of these organs benefits from conditioning, the heart and blood vessels improve the most. But why don’t the lungs? Aren’t they what make you gasp for air during exercise? The answer is not really. As an unfit person exercises, his muscles quickly run out of oxygen. Needing more to continue, the muscles summon the brain, which reacts by commanding the heart to beat f aster and the lungs to breathe harder. The lack of oxygen however, is not because of the lungs’ inability to take in enough—they usually can—but because the heart and blood vessels cannot get this oxygen to the muscles. People are far more aware of their labored breathing than their rapid heart rate. The best way to banish shortness of breath is to condition your heart and blood vessels with exercise. As the heart muscle becomes stronger, it enlarges slightly, also expanding its network of blood vessels. This ena bles the heart to receive a larger blood supply so it too can get more oxygen during periods of heavy work. Now it can pump more blood with each beat.
More heart muscle isn’t always an indication of good heath. When the heart enlarges without building extra blood vessels, it’s vulnerable to irregular beats. Far more people die because of clogged blood vessels to the heart, which cut off its blood supply, thereby depriving it of oxygen. A muscle deprived of oxygen dies. Hence the part of the heart denied oxygen dies, and if it’s a large enough area, the heart attack victim dies. The prescription here is exercise. It gently conditions the heart, installing more bloo d vessels throughout it. Then if an obstruction occurs, there will be other blood vessels to deliver oxygen to the stricken area.
Muscular conditioning
Muscular fitness consist of three categories–muscle strength, muscle endurance and muscle flexibility. It focuses on body movement. Muscle strength which is the maximum force generated by a contracting muscle as measured by the maximum amount of weight you can lift only once. Though strength-gaining exercises do require you to lift heavy weights, you should be able to lift them between three and ten times. By lifting such weights you stress your muscles. It’s a positive stress. Muscles respond to it by building more white or “fast-twitch” muscle fiber, the generator of peak force.
The next category is muscle endurance. Controlled by red or “slow-twitch” fiber, endurance is the ability of a muscle to contract repeatedly for a sustained period. This is not strength; a muscle with only endurance won’t be able to lift heavy objects. To build this fiber, you exercise less intensely; instead of lifting heavy weights, say, 6 times, you lift lighter weights 15 to 25 times. These activities your heart likes because they are continuous in their demand from extra oxygen and the heart must keep working hard to provide it—exactly what it needs to stay healthy.
The last category is flexibility which is the elasticity of muscles and tendons attained through regular stretching. In professional and amateur sports flexibility is crucial. It ensures athletes a wide range of motion, which even more than strength and endurance, protects them from injury. As a flexible person you can assume more postures and perform more movements.
Nutritional status
You are what you eat. Becoming what you eat sounds more humorous than frightening. Too many visits to junk food store won’t turn you into a donut, french fry or frankfurter. Unfortunately, it can do worse. What you eat affects how you look, feel, act, and even think. A high-fat diet makes you fat. Only extremely active people escape this fate; yet they are by no means safe. What they do get from fatty foods are clogged arteries, cancers and many other maladies. For those who are not active, the downf all is more obvious. The human body wasn’t made to be fat. Overweight people have less energy, a condition that depletes them mentally and fatigues them easily–even from moderate activities. The problems with many diets are not limited to excess fat.
The wrong proportion of nutrients, not enough vitamins, too little fiber—these also interfere with the function of your body and mind. Ultimately, you are what you eat and that is a big part of fitness.
