7 Ways To Stay Young At Heart – Part 6

Always sitting around won’t help you if you’re trying to stay young at heart, not to mention in your body! It’s actually the opposite. If you don’t move your body enough, you’ll age faster and have more health problems than you otherwise would have.

So that suggests you need to engage in that dreaded topic known as exercise. However, you can skip joining a gym and doing daily cardio. Cardio is good for you, though. So you can absolutely do it if you enjoy it.

If you don’t enjoy cardio, don’t panic because there are other options. Exercise has become synonymous with going to the gym in our society over the last couple of decades. Still, there’s no reason it needs to be. Exercise is simply moving your body.

Any purposeful activity that makes you move your body is exercise. That means getting up and doing things. Yoga and tai chi are low-impact exercise forms popular with seniors.

Do you know one of the best types of exercise you can engage in outside of a gym? Gardening. Maintaining a flower or vegetable garden is a great way to get in or stay in shape.

Walking is an excellent form of exercise too. You can walk on a treadmill if you want, but there’s no reason to do that. Instead, you can walk at the mall (some malls have walking clubs), at the park, on the beach, or walking trails.

Hiking, swimming, and canoeing are also great forms of exercise if you’re healthy enough for them. Many seniors favor bicycling. You can purchase a recumbent or electric bike to make it easier.

An often overlooked type of exercise is dancing. Every form of dancing is great exercise. Most towns have a place offering dance classes for seniors, and many communities have older adult dances regularly. Some places offer a different dance style each month -ballroom one month, line dancing the next, and so forth.

As usual, the most important thing is not what kind of exercise you choose, but that you choose to exercise at all and that you do so regularly. That’s what will keep you young and fit.

(Important note: if you’re not used to exercising, get your doctor’s permission before you start!)