Sunday, August 12, 2012

Health Benefits Of Fitness For Overweight Adults

For years, overweight adults have been told that obesity is the worst of health problems. It has been proven the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some forms of cancer will increase with too much body fat. However, a study in the March 1999 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported that overweight men who were physically fit were less likely to die of all causes, including cardiovascular disease, than men who were lean but unfit.
This is good news for overweight people who are physically fit. It is also a good reason for overweight people who are not fit to begin a fitness program. It means that it is possible to be overweight and still reduce the risks of cardiovascular disease by becoming physically fit.
 
There is the objective description for the definition "physically fit". The human body is composed of a variety of tissues.  The lean tissue of the body includes tissues, such as muscle, bone, and organs.  These kinds of tissues are considered to be "alive," or metabolically active.  The fat tissue (adipose) of the body is not active.  It is divided into three categories: essential fat, storage fat, and non-essential fat.  Non-essential fat is considered a hindrance to health and serves no real purpose.  This type of fat should be kept to minimum.  
Body weight does not measure the percentages of lean tissue and fat tissue.  Stepping on a scale is simply a method of measuring total body weight.  Scales cannot indicate the difference between over-weight and over-fat.  In order to measure the different body tissues, a body composition analysis must be performed. 
 
If we would start performing this test in schools, we could find out that there is a growing crisis in our nation. Childhood obesity threatens one in three kids with long-term health problems. To help promote youth fitness, daily physical education must become part of the core curriculum in all grades (K-12). Many schools over the past two decades have eliminated physical education in order to replace these classes with academic instruction. However, the result has not increased levels of academic achievement but increased levels of obesity. The lack of daily PE along with the increased amount of time playing computer games has had a staggering effect on the health of our nation's youth. Most children are not getting the 30-minute daily physical activity recommendation of the Surgeon General.

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