Falling in love with running makes you happy…

 

There is no denying that running improves your health. Even small amount of time like 5-10 minutes of running daily, helps you to become healthier and you can feel the freedom of movement in your body.

Just take a moment to think how beautiful it is to run freely in the sunshine, feel the wind and breeze on your shoulders. Have an attitude of gratitude of being able to move your body and enjoy the fresh air with a smile on your face while admiring the scenery of wonderful nature around you.

It is an intelligent choice for exercise, as running is always accessible, relatively inexpensive and often many support groups available. You can do it anytime you want and not relying on gym timetables for instance. All you need is a pair of running shoes and off you go!

Walking is very beneficial for your health too, however running burns nearly double the number of calories compared to walking. For example, if you weigh around 80 kg, running will burn approximately 600 calories whereas walking will burn only around 300 calories.

However, forget the scale and weighing yourself. Running needs to be enjoyed while having fun doing it. Allow yourself to fall in love with jogging!

Benefits of Running

 

Running stimulates cellular immunity by increasing circulation of immune cells in your body and makes you more resistant to infections by increasing your body temperature which may prevent bacteria growing in your body. Inflammation is significantly reduced by doing regular exercise. Moderate amount of aerobic exercise increases the circulation of immune cells from bone marrow, the lungs and the spleen.

Research showed that during the pandemic fit people coped better and had better health outcomes compared to unfit people. People who exercise less and are depressed have a decrease in NK cell activity and a decrease in the ability of T and B lymphocytes to clear viruses. This results in an overall decrease in the antiviral immunity of immune cells, making people more prone to viral infections.

Regular running will lower your risk of developing heart disease, obesity and type 2 diabetes. You can even come off your heart medications if you start running. This happened to one guy that fell in love with running, discontinued his cardiac medications and eventually ran a marathon in a record time of a little more than 2,5 hours. That’s incredible!

Exercise helps you to sleep better by giving better sleep in quality and quantity. Good sleep enhances your immunity system.

Moderate-intensity exercise can reduce the development and release of stress hormones (adrenaline) and increase the neurotransmitters in the brain by improving mood and feeling good. High-impact exercise will also prevent depression and mental health problems.

Physical inactivity, along with mental, emotional, and spiritual stagnation, can lead to cellular inactivity and stagnation, therefore compromising mental health.

 

Top 7 tips for running:

 

1. Look after your “core health”, meaning building a strong core. It helps the runner to run efficiently by maintaining their centre of gravity especially towards the end of the race. Therefore, simple exercise of doing planks at home helps you to strengthen the core muscles.
2. Try interval training to boost your performance and running hills reinforces slightly different muscles and pushing yourself running little longer than normally, increases your performance.
3. Stretching is essential before and after running. It is super easy to forget to stretch, but trust me, you will feel 100% percent better when you stretch pre and post exercise. Simple strategies of stretching is essential.
4. If you are not up to running yet, try uphill walking or power walking, meaning walking harder to build muscles and burn more calories. Start adding short runs to your walking and slowly but surely you can increase your fitness level.
5. Make fitness your lifestyle, everyday habit of increasing wellness and happiness to your life. By tailoring it to your busy schedule instead of adding more things to do, you can easily adopt a new lifestyle of running into everyday life.
6. Enjoy every minute of running; it is for your health benefit, happiness and enjoyment. Body-Soul-Spirit connection is important, as it is all interrelated and interconnected. If you enjoy what you do, your mind will be at peace too.
7. Your will power is extremely powerful. Whatever your mind chooses to think or believe, has a behavioural consequence. If you are willing, you can run!