stress management  |  nutrition  |  health  |  fat loss  |  fitness

 

Nutrition and exercise not only complement each other but they need each other. Even if you eat a perfectly balanced diet you need to exercise to burn the calories. If you pair regular exercise with a well-balanced diet, you'll notice immediate changes in mood and energy levels. More importantly, consistently eating well and exercising will improve your health and extend your lifespan.

 

Regular exercise & proper nutrition can help reduce body fat as well as protect against chronic diseases associated with obesity. It will help to prevent or manage high blood pressure. It also raises high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, known as the “good” cholesterol, and lowers low density lipoprotein (LDL) or “bad” cholesterol. This combination will decrease the amount of harmful plaques that can build-up on your artery walls and keep blood flowing smoothly. According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention Regular exercise can also help prevent type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, and certain cancers

 

 

Exercise prescription

 

An integral part of any Wellness program is physical activity. Thus knowing how much & what to include in your daily activity regimen is of crucial value. Concurrently the person prescribing the exercise has to be a qualified personal with a fitness & medical background

So we now embark to discuss the important awareness issues namely EXERCISE PRESCRIPTION (ExRx)

 

A fundamental objective of exercise prescription is to bring about a change in personal health behaviour to include habitual physical activity.

The art of exercise prescription is the successful integration of exercise science with behavioural techniques that result in long term compliance and attainment of individual goals i.e. the prescription should be developed with careful consideration of the individual’s health status (including medications), risk factor profile, behavioral characteristics, personal goals and exercise preferences.

 

Before prescribing an  ExRx we need to take in consideration all the aspects of an individual through

 

• Health & medical history to determine if you have any health issues and medication  that would limit your ability to exercise or require modifications to your program.

 

• Family Medical history to determine the risk factors in your genetic programing

 

• Fitness Assessment and Evaluation is the next step in designing your exercise prescription. This assessment is useful to establish a baseline of your current fitness and help determine what sort of exercise you can safely perform. The assessment often includes simple measurements of your blood pressure and heart rate, strength, flexibility, body composition, cardiovascular endurance, exercise history, and goals and interests. A variety of assessment protocols are used and these are often repeated at regular intervals to gauge your progress.

 

Components of exercise prescription

 

An exercise prescription generally includes the following specific recommendations:

 

• Type of exercise or activity (eg, walking, swimming, cycling)

• Specific workloads (eg, watts, walking speed)

• Duration and frequency of the activity or exercise session

• Intensity guidelines – Target heart rate (THR) range and estimated rate of perceived exertion (RPE)

• Precautions regarding certain orthopaedic (or other) concerns or related comments