If you think controlling your cholesterol through diet and exercise sounds boring and tedious, there’s good news: Doctors say mixing up the kinds of cholesterol-controlling exercise you do, and varying the time spent at different types—does more to control cholesterol and protect your heart than simply watching your diet. Exercise experts break down beneficial physical activity into three types:
- Aerobic exercise, which raises your heart rate. This includes such activities as cycling, running, swimming, walking, and stair-climbing.
- Strength training, muscle-building exercise such as use of resistance-training machines or free weights.
- Flexibility exercise—stretching, for instance, or yoga to keep you limber.
How much of each type of exercise do you need in order to control cholesterol? To measure how much effort you’re putting into an exercise, experts use the acronym FIT (for Frequency, Intensity, and Time. In particular:
- Frequency refers to how often you return to a particular exercise in your routine.
- Intensity refers to how hard you work at the exercise.
- Time refers to the seconds and minutes you spend exercising.
Once again, you get to entertain yourself by mixing up the various components.
However you decide to break down your exercise, you can rest assured that you are doing great things to lower your cholesterol and lower your risk of diabetes, stroke, and heart attack. And forget about that “feel the burn” nonsense and “no pain, no gain.”—sure routes to injury, which could throw you off your exercise schedule and discourage you.
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