How to Exercise for a Healthy Heart

Series Summary

Everyone wants to live a fit and healthy life, but sometimes beginning a new diet and exercise routine can be daunting and challenging. Changing eating habits and learning to stick to an exercise regimen might be difficult to acclimate to at first, but having a solid knowledge base about the types of foods and exercises to include for a healthy lifestyle is an important part of sticking to any lifestyle change. Interested in creating a healthy diet and exercise plan? In this free video series on health and fitness an experienced fitness trainer discusses how to stay healthy with proper exercises and eating habits. Learn to exercise for a healthy heart and choose a diet or weight loss plan. Get tips on calculating hip-to-waist ratio and daily caloric needs. Burn more calories, lose weight and stay healthy with the expert tips in this free video series on healthy lifestyles.

Video Transcript

"To exercise for a healthy heart you must include cardiovascular into your day. This is Alice Mansaert and I'd like to give you some tips on including cardiovascular into your program. The cardiovascular exercises recommended by the American Council of Sports Medicine are walking, jogging, biking, jumping rope, anything that is a continuous activity for 20 to 30 minutes a day. Now as a beginner exerciser that is difficult to accomplish. So start off slow and add gradual intensity and more frequency and more duration each time you go out to exercise. So if I am going to begin a walking program then I might say hey, once a week, I can go out or twice a week I can go out for about 15 minutes a day. Great, that's where you start but over the period of time you are going to have to overload your system and ask your heart and lungs once they get used to what you are doing to do more. That's what we call overload and/or progression. So if you can start out with two days a week and then incorporate more days a week, four days a week or start with 20 minutes and then eventually work up to 30. Again the American College of Sports Medicine recommends accumulating up to 30 minutes of continuous activity every day. If you do that, you are going to see a great difference in your overall lung capacity and your heart rate should drop down. So this is Alice Monsaert and I am going to encourage you to get active every day for at least 30 minutes."