30 Minutes a Day Life Changing

How are you investing in your future? No, this is not a sales pitch for life insurance. Or is it? 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise each day is an investment worth trying. 

It’s 2020. At this point everyone has surely heard of self-care. For some that means a massage, pedicure, lunch with a friend, alone time, reading a book, or a long walk. 

For me, self-care is exercise. Raising my heart rate, sweating, lowering my anxiety, controlling my breathing, and really pushing my body to be stronger.

Exercise does more than just help with physical appearance. Here are so internal benefits that will improve your overall health.

Heart Health

30 minutes of exercise each day can lower your cholesterol, lower your blood pressure, and precondition your heart to build resilience. In order for exercise to be beneficial for your heart, you need to activate the metabolic molecular pathways responsible for conditioning—known as ischemic preconditioning. Exercise needs to be moderate where breathing is slightly labored and increase to vigorous where you start to experience muscle fatigue. 

Reduce Stress

Everyone can benefit from less stress. Exercise increases the amount of norepinephrine; this chemical is responsible for moderating our brain’s response to stress. On hard days, sweat that stress away!

Improve Mood

ENDORPHINS. I’ll say it again for those in the back, endorphins. Depression is real. Postpartum depression is real. Why not try to combat depression with a boost of endorphins and improve your overall mood!

Memory Like an Elephant

Exercise increases the cell volume by 2% in the hippocampus. Hippo what? The hippocampus is part of the limbic system in your brain which is responsible for learning and memory. Basically you can reverse age related memory loss by 1 to 2 years with consistent aerobic exercise.

Confidence

Invest in yourself so you can pour into others. This is my mantra. I learned this hard way after having my first child and spun into postpartum depression. Nothing builds confidence like having a strong and capable body.