Paths to a healthy life - Pillar number one: Physical Activity

This workshop is a collaboration between Gisele Ortomolecular (specialist) and teacher Guil (moderator). Gisele's objective is to empower people to take control of their health while also covering the fundamentals of a healthy life.

We have 4 Pillars of health and they are:

1. Physical Activity
2. Restorative Sleep
3. Stress Modulation
4. Adequate Nutrition

Physical Activity

Something that I want to have you remember here is that our bodies love movement. We thrive off of movement, it’s what we are designed for.

In today's day and age, a lot of us spend so much of our time sitting, lying down, and being kind of stagnant. And really though our bodies are meant to move in all different kinds of ways, different paces, different speeds, different positions, and we feel good when we move.‍

Exercise is wonderful for our mental health and our mental and emotional well-being. It’s the first cure for depression. It’s also good for our bone health and our heart health.

Even some simple stretching in the morning is excellent to just get your blood going and blood circulating.

The World Health Organization Guideline recommends that we exercise about 150 min of moderate cardiovascular activity per week.

Try to include some weight training because the recommendations is at least 2 sessions a week.

As we age, we tend to lose muscle mass and bone density, and we can slow this process down. So really put an emphasis on making sure that you’re moving your body every single day.

And if you’re kind of new to moving your body more often, then don’t feel you have to be doing an hour-long workout five days a week. Honestly, even just 15 min of some intense exercise each day is enough.

When we are pushing ourselves harder than we need to, it can be discouraging because we often feel like it’s too hard, we don’t enjoy it, we don’t want to do this... so, pace yourself, start slowly, and also find something that you love. Sometimes there’s a bit of trial and error here, you got to try out some new things, find what you like best.

Remember that physical activity releases feel-good hormones called endorphins, which help us sleep and feel better.