Physical fitness involves the ability to perform daily activities with ease and without fatigue, as well as the ability to engage in physical activities and sports.
Men and women who are physically fit typically have a lower risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. They also have a healthier state of mind, which in turn promotes better concentration, emotional balance, and problem-solving capabilites.
Physical fitness can be achieved through regular exercise, a healthy diet, and ample sleep.
Exercise
Strength Training
Strength Training is a key component of physical fitness. Building strength improves overall physical performance and reduces the risk of injury.
Resistance training exercises such as weightlifting, bodyweight exercises, and calisthenics builds muscle mass and bone density, and increase your strength and endurance.
Possessing solid lean muscle also helps you lose or control weight. This is due to the fact that muscle burns calories. It needs a lot of energy.
A solid muscle profile also ensures joint security and facilitates healthy ligaments and tendons. This means that your joints will stay healthier longer, well into old age if you continue to maintain muscle.
Finally, strong muscle also slows down the signs of aging, keeping your skin taut and your hormones active. Muscles require testosterone AND encourage its continued production.
Build muscle, stay young.
Cardiovascular Training
Cardiovascular Training is also vital. It involves the ability of the heart, lungs, and blood vessels working at maximum capacity.
Cardio activities increase your heart's rate and volume, and the efficiency of your lungs in moving that vital oxygen and nutrients to the muscles.
Beyond making your musculoskeletal system function well, cardio even helps you look younger. When you body heats and cools during exercise, newly oxygenated blood flows outward through fine capillaries, supplying nutrients to superficial organs such as skin.
Meanwhile, oxidants and pollutants in unhealthy cells are drained back into your lymphatic system for disposal, and externally, perspiration from your sweat glands assists with cleaning debris from your pores.
Cardiovascular exercise is essential on so many levels.
Activities such as running, cycling, swimming, and rowing all improve your cardiovascular profile. These same exercises, which involve twisting of the hips and core, also contribute solidly towards achieving a trim and toned waist.
Nutrition
It seems that everyone is a nutrition guru nowadays. Take what information you will from all the dietary evangelists, but one fact remains true:
Obesity is caused by over eating
You can't out-run a bad diet. This is the ultimate truth and an aspect of physical fitness that seems cool to ignore nowadays for fear of offending fat people.
But pity, feigned love, and sensitivity are not going to make a fat person look thin. Death, however, will.
The reality is that if people who insist they don't over-eat still remain fat, medical science would have started cutting into these people to uncover the secrets of their magical energy source.
If it isn't food, then what is it? Don't you think governments across the globe would have devoted billions to solving that mystery instead of pursuing wind farms or solar energy? Just tap into the magical fat energy that half the population claims to possess.
It hasn't happened because it doesn't exist. Everyone knows it doesn't exist, they just don't want to fat-shame you. Obesity is caused by over-eating. That's it. No secret.
Meal size
You need to have smaller meals, no bigger than the size of your fist, and you need to dump excessive consumption of processed grains and sugar - including alcohol.
You don't have to dump all grain and sugar forever, but if you're trying to drop kilograms, that's absolutely where you have to start.
If you want to look good and feel great, you must control what you put into your mouth. No one can do that for you, and no gym membership is going to neutralise the effects of poor diet.
Macronutrients
Everyone needs protein, fat, and carbohydrates to survive. Until you are down to a normal body size, i.e. under 24% body fat, don't focus on one particular macronutrient.
Reduce your meal size and cut out your sugars and starches. That is the ONLY way you will get down to that healthy target. Then you can start to focus on particular macronutient levels.
Hydration
Finally, hydration is an important often-overlooked aspect of nutrition, along with maintaining a healthy balance of electrolytes - essentially salts and sugars - to keep your synapes firing.
Rest & Recovery
Another often-overlooked aspect of physical fitness is proper rest. Taking time out, both mentally and physically, is vital. No matter how busy you are, find time to take a break, pat the dog, have a laugh with a mate, and most crucially, make sure you get enough sleep.
The most effective exercise and diet regime, must be supported by adequate sleep. Your body needs time to recover, and it is during sleep that much of the body's repair systems do their magic.
To maximise the recovery process, many guys also use yoga, pilates, massage, and stretching.
As well as just feeling good, all of these aid muscle recovery and help shift lymphatic waste out of the body.
By focusing on the above factors, you can improve your health, well-being, and overall quality of life.