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Exercise Prescription
by Jim Meuninck

Carrying a twenty five pound pack effectively doubles your calorie burn.  Five pound weights on lower legs makes a walk the equivalent of a run over the same distance. (Photo: first Burroughs, Mt. Raineer National Park).

CAUTION:  With any exercise regimen always seek the guidance and recommendations from your physician before initiating a program.

Here is what I do.   I try to get forty five minutes to one hour of exercise, 7 days per week. I do not exercise if too tired or sick.  In practice, I average 20-25 workouts per month.  Weight bearing exercise is an integral part of my routine.

Major study showed that at least a two mile walk every day reduced overall risk of death by 50%. -New England Journal of medicine (1998,33:94-99). *

*Study included 707 nonsmoking men from 61-81 years of age. Twelve year study: 208 died, 43.1% of dead participants walked less that one mile per day, whereas those who walked two or more miles only 21.5% died. Those who walked more than two miles faired better than those who walked two miles. Long walkers died 60% less of cancer.

OTHER BENEFITS OF EXERCISE:

• Speculation suggests that two mile daily walking diminishes hypertension, lipid levels, clotting mechanisms. Improves immune function.
• Exercise improves circulation of nutrients, oxygen and waste products to and from individual cells, all cells from the brain to distal capillaries.
• Exercise and fat intake reduction may be the only way to lose weight and keep it off naturally.
• Exercise can improve your cholesterol to HDL ratio.
• Exercise can reduce stress and oxidative damage caused by stress induced metabolic changes.
• Exercise is a form of play, it is creative, and when done in the appropriate environment provides spirit like trances and endorphin highs that can be addictive.
• Exercise improves your rest.
• Exercise raises your metabolic rate and there is an increased burn of calories hours after you have completed your workout.
• Exercise tones all organ systems and strengthens the heart and diaphragm two vital muscles controlled by the autonomic nervous system.
• Regular exercise can lower blood pressure (in a few test subjects  as much as 50%*)
• Daily exercise, 30 minutes per day, lowers LDL, raises HDL, decreases adipose tissue on body, decreases triglyceride levels and improves LDL to HDL ratio.
• Exercise has no gender bias.
• Exercise increases longevity by restoring primal conditioning as hairless, running apes, not prone to the sedentary ways of information age anthropoids.
• Fitness can be achieved by walking hand in hand, day after day with the one you love.
• Exercise can delay the onset of degenerative diseases: arthritis, diabetes and heart disease.
• Increases estrogen levels.
• Induces relaxation by burning off adrenaline.
• Relaxes muscle tension.
• Builds bone mass and muscles.
• Improves skin tone, elasticity of skin and connective tissue.
• Improves bladder control.
• Improves sex, aids digestion, reduces arthritis symptoms. 
  
  (Copyright Meuninck 1999)

For more on exercise, diet,  plant foods against disease, five minute gardening and over 800 pages of information see:  Diet for natural Health Interactive Computer Database.

Two: The moderate exercise is a leisure or brisk walk for at least two miles or a 10-12 mile bike ride every evening. Kayaking, wind surfing or hitting tennis balls against a wall, all before noon if possible. If the weather is impossible to get out into, I skip a day. No guilt, no shame. I may increase my weight training on the indoor day. Once weekly I try to have a full day of activity. This will be a vigorous two or three hour hike coupled with a swim in Lake Michigan, maybe proceeded in the morning with wind surfing. This is my all out physical day and it is usually Saturday or Sunday. Guess what! I eat out on the evening of this all "out exercise" day. I break some diet rules, knowing that tomorrow I am back on my rigid dietary schedule. In the winter, it's cross country skiing in the dunes or in the forest. I also like to X-country at night (night comes at five pm in Michigan). If there is no snow I walk, hike or ice skate. It's difficult to exercise as much in the winter. I have all the indoor exercise machines, but they bore me. I have yet to join an indoor exercise facility, but am seriously considering it.

For more information on exercise and weight loss see:  Diet for Natural Health  and The Diet for Natural Health Interactive Computer disk