The cost of inactivity is a funny subject. People usually want to know, how much is it going to cost them, in money terms if they don’t exercise. Like for example, if they have a heart problem or get hurt because of fragility from inactivity, and how much is it going to cost to fix it. But, measuring the cost of inactivity in money terms is wrong. Very wrong.

There is much bigger price to pay, than several tens of thousands of dollars.The cost of inactivity is a matter of life and death.

If you are inactive and you get seriously sick, your most important worry will be to get better, to survive and to somehow get through it and live well into the future. Not how much it is going to cost you. That will certainly worry you, but it will be secondary.

If you are inactive, you will pay in other terms for it than just money. You will pay by not having healthy heart, healthy digestive system, clear and sharp mind, lots of energy, risking deadly diseases and others. And of course, you will still pay a lot of money to get these back, if it is still possible. And very often it is not.

So, first, set your priorities straight. Your health is much more important than money! Your health is the most important thing in the world. If you think otherwise, don’t read any further. You will most likely die too soon with a fat bank account.

The cost of inactivity – unhealthy, weak heart

By far, unhealthy, weak heart is responsible for majority of premature deaths in the world. And in most cases, it can be prevented.

Just think about it for a second. If you are inactive, you are risking dying 10, 15 and maybe more years earlier, than you would otherwise. And that is a incredibly huge price to pay. You pay for it with your life. And if that doesn’t make you to do something about it, I don’t know what else will.

The cost of inactivity – slow, lousy brain function

Healthy, fast functioning and performing brain and clear healthy mind is a base of everything happening in our bodies and our life’s too. And without regular physical exercise you will not have it. And when you don’t have this incredible benefit, everything else suffers.

There is never healthy mind in unhealthy body. But there is almost always great mind (great functioning brain) in healthy strong body.

The cost of inactivity – incredibly high risk of injury

If you are inactive, you will almost certainly get hurt sooner or later. Your body will be fragile like a wine glass. And what happens to the wine glass when it flips over on the table? It breaks. And you will brake something too, when you fall. The active person that is tough and strong will end up with some bruises when he falls, but nothing broken.

If you are injured, your abilities are limited. You are in pain, you suffer and you are miserable. And all of that can be prevented with regular physical activity.

I haven’t have any serious injury past 15 years now. I had Nothing broken, no twisted ankles, no bad knees and hips, not even pulled muscle. And I engage in extremes sports, like surfing, aggressive fast skinning, playing soccer, rollerblading, taking many ugly looking and painful falls in the process.

My primary job when I came to America was moving. I did this kind of job for 3 years almost everyday without day off. It’s an occupation notorious for it’s high back and knee injuries. I still remember being crushed by large piano on fourth floor of 7 floor building at 11 PM and still finishing the move that ended at 3 AM with lots of bruises and cuts but without anything seriously damaged.

Now, looking back, I just laugh at those times. I laugh, because I don’t have any long term health consequences of doing this kind of job. A lot of people go to lifetime disability after a job like this. Yes, moving companies love fresh immigrants in America.

The reason I didn’t get seriously hurt was my regular weight training. Yes, even inspite of moving furniture every day, I still did find time to do my weight training and stretching exercises. If I didn’t I would be in pain today.

The cost of inactivity – low self confidence

Successful people know, that their confidence in their abilities is one of the most important things for them and for their success. Lots of them build theirs through intensive physical training.

It is not rare to see successful doctor, dentist or investment banker to look incredibly fit and strong. They know, what intensive training gives them – high self confidence. And they can transfer it tho their life and profession.

I sometimes think, that my self confidence is just simply too high. I get almost cocky, and I don’t like that. Authority people in many situations don’t mean anything to me. And I lose respect often to people that have certain authority, subsequently getting in trouble. That’s why I got fired from 3 our of 5 jobs I held before. But eventually found my dream job after that

Which is of course a side effect of my own physical fitness. And often times, I need to calm myself down and play nice humble guy.

Of course, i don’t want you to get too confident and cocky and getting into a trouble because of that. And you won’t, unless you can mach my own physical fitness

But some healthy confidence can really help you in life. And, If you are not physically active, you are missing on your own self confidence build up.

The cost of inactivity – bad sleep

It is true that, if you don’t do much of physical activity throughout your day, you don’t need that much sleep either. But the sleep you get is usually shallow, not completely restful. You have a tough time to get up in the morning, and you feel tired throughout the day.

Being physically active improves and deepens the quality of your sleep. Your body is able to recover faster and you feel more rested in the morning and in your day.

The cost of inactivity – low energy levels

To get more energy, you have to spend some energy. This is true with physical exercise and your energy levels too.

Yes, I know, exercise makes you tired. Working your body to the sweat will leave you tired. And that is true, especially when you are just starting and your body is not used to it.

Over time, when physical activity becomes part of your life, and you become regularly active, you will experience huge amount of extra energy. This will probably happen right in the beginning when you are just starting.

 You have to start slowly. Your body is not used to it. Starting with just 30 minutes of walking around the block will be enough for those completely sedentary.

Increasing amount and intensity of physical activity over time is important later for even more energy, performance and health benefits. 

I never feel tired and I never take naps. While this is mainly because of my diet, regular exercise plays a big roll in it too.

I feel incredibly amazing the whole day. Sometimes when I just feel good, I am disappointed, because I want to feel amazing. Of course feeling good for me feels like feeling incredibly amazing to somebody who doesn’t eat perfect diet and moves regularly. My standards in this case are just too high.

The cost of inactivity – cancer

Regular physical activity helps prevent cancer, period.

If you are physically inactive you are exposing your body to this dangerous illness. And that might cost you your life. That is the ultimate price you can pay for something – your life.

Engaging in just for 20 minutes in any kind of physical activity helps decrease your chances by getting cancer exponentially. And in this case, we need any help we can get.

Nobody is immune against cancer. We all have a cancerous cells in us. Our job is to do maximum to minimize this chance. And physical activity and healthy diet will massively help you to do that.

The cost of inactivity – diabetes

The cost of inactivity in this case is incredibly high. Inactivity causes weight gain and insulin resistance and that over time leads to diabetes.

Diabetes is a condition, in which your body’s ability to metabolize sugar is diminished. It is an inability to process sugars in our blood stream so higher sugar levels keep washing our arteries and organs causing inflammation and exposing us to huge dangers.

I believe that high blood sugar levels are the beginning of everything bad in our bodies. Either it is cancer, heart disease and subsequently heart attack, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, it all starts with insulin resistance and increased blood sugar levels.

Type 2 Diabetes can be prevented and even reversed with diet improvement and regular physical activity. Working muscles use sugars in blood for energy and that helps to keep normal levels of sugar in bloodstream.

The cost of inactivity – being fat and unattractive

Who wants to be ugly, unattractive and fat? Nobody.

I know a girl that is really ugly. And, she is beautiful at the same time. But this girl, beside being very intelligent, smart and really nice is very physically active. She exercises regularly every day, lifting weights, running and rowing. As a result of her exercise, she is very attractive and men are getting their necks twisted when they see her. She has supper attractive body and even the face looks great from all that physical training. It is still ugly, but kind of attractive.

As a result of her diligent exercise and of course intelligence, she is beautiful. Yes physical fitness can do this to you.

I am pretty ugly, unattractive, bald guy myself. Yet I always dated the most beautiful women. I don’t want to brag about this, but to give you an example how you too can become very attractive by engaging in regular physical activity.

The cost of inactivity – shorter life

Nobody want’s to live short. We all want to live long and happy life’s.

But, we don’t often realize that we are making it shorter and more painful by sitting still on the sofa, enjoying those tasty chips and watching our favorite shows for long periods of time, without having any physical activity in our days.

The price is very high. The price is your life. The shorter life. Are you willing to pay it? I don’t think so.

And the way to not pay it is to introduce physical activity to your life. It’s really not as hard as you think. And it really should be motivating too. The price to pay, if not doing it is just too high.

The cost of inactivity – lousy sexual performance

Inactive people have a lousy sex life. For great sex life, you need to be attractive first, than you have to have some energy. You need fit body and strong muscles to move around and you need a healthy dose of sex hormone floating in your blood stream. And all this can be achieved by regular physical activity.

By not being physically active, your sex life will suffer. It will most likely be nonexistent.

The cost of inactivity – dementia

Studies show, that our brain function correlates with our body’s functioning abilities. In other words said, the fitter your body is, the sharper your brain is. And the more inactive you are, the more cloudy your thinking will be. Which eventually leads to dementia.

Dementia is a condition where brain cell die over time to the point that we lose our independence. With physical exercise, mainly skilled physical exercise, new nerve cell connections are build and that improves the overall brain performance.

There is a clear evidence, that walking 3 times around your block, can increase your brain function by far more than doing challenging crosswords puzzles the whole day.

So, to stay sharp, smart, and independent, don’t sit on your ass. Move!

The cost of inactivity – Alzheimer’s disease and Stroke

Some doctors that are few steps ahead of recent medicine consider Alzheimer’s disease as Type 3 diabetes. Yes, blood sugar related. And so is stroke.

When too sweet blood washes your arteries and brain vanes, it is seriously damaging them. It creates inflammation and the arteries start to attract plaque. 

It’s also seriously affecting nerve connections, that are so abundant in the brain. Over time, the damage becomes so serious, that persons artery or a little vein becomes clogged and stroke happens.

Physical exercise is the best bet against Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers didn’t find anything better to prevent it so far. And I doubt, they ever will. Alzheimer’s disease is becoming really epidemic recently. And the reason is: not enough physical exercise in our life’s.

For maximizing of the benefits of exercise against Alzheimer’s, I recommend people to do some skill activity. That means, that instead of running on the treadmill or elliptical trainer, you play tennis,roller blade, surf, play ping pong, swim, kick the ball while running and others.

While doing your cardiovascular exercise, you will be learning certain skill. And that promotes nerve creation and nerve connections. And that makes you smarter and sharper.

You can’t afford not to do it

Intensive, hard physical work is primal to us. We were mend to struggle physically every day. Unfortunately, these healing, highly beneficial physical movement is disappearing from our modern life’s.

But in order to live a great life and to live up to your maximum potential, you have to find the way to introduce it back to your life.

 It is seriously important. Your life depends on it.

The cost of inactivity is incredibly high. Many don’t realize it, but they pay dearly for it. They pay with their health and life for it. Don’t let that happen to you. Move regularly. Move intensively. Move. Move. Move. And save your most precious thing, your health and your life.

Related articles:

• How to prevent injuries
• How to have skinny, fit looking arms
• Love your body, take care of it and you’ll love your life
• Highly functional workout – somewhere just behind your house
• Home workout plan for elderly people and beginners

Inactivity causes bad sleep. Bad sleep causes obesity and decreased immunity system. Every vital function in your body slows down, causing you to get old fast.

Sedentary people have interrupted, not deep enough sleep, that makes them tired the next day. When they are tired, they don’t exercise. And the fallowing night, they don’t sleep well again, and so on.

Don’t let that happen to you. Be active. You don’t have to run 10 K right away. Start slowly and increase intensity and distance overtime. Go for a walk today. You will sleep better. Guaranteed. Than you will feel better next day. And you can go for faster, longer walk, and so on.

You really need a better sleep. It is seriously important for a good life. Get active. Strength train and do your cardiovascular exercise regularly and reap one of the great benefits of being physically active -  great sleep.

It’s mostly those fit people who tell you after exhausting hike, all day skiing or intensive tennis or soccer game : What are we doing tonight? Where are we going next? Do you want to go dancing tonight?

You think : Aren’t you suppose to be tired by now after all that you did today and just go sleep or watch TV?

Yes, those fit, active people are restless. Their bodies recover faster from hard physical activity and they want more. Their bodies work more efficiently.

And that’s why they stay active all the time. They don’t get fat. They don’t get sick. Their bodies work like a well oiled machine. They burn like a perfect roman candle.

If you are inactive, you are missing a big part of fun time in life. You don’t have enough energy to enjoy certain activities and you don’t have enough  energy to do more things.

You need to exercise intensively at least 30 minutes 4 – 6 times per week doing strength, endurance and flexibility exercises for more energy.

Try some of my workout plans for more energy in your life.

Stay more active at work with these office (work) workouts: 

Office workout – beginner # 1

Office workout – beginner # 2

Office workout – intermediate # 1

Office workout – intermediate # 2

Office workout – advanced # 1

Office workout – advanced # 2

Office workout guidelines 

And don’t forget about stretching at work or office:

Stretch at work, office

Inactivity leads to excess abdominal fat.

One third of cancers of the colon, kidney, and digestive tract are caused by being inactive.

Being inactive causes diabetes and diabetes causes impotence, blindness, heart attacks, strokes, amputations and death.

Inactive people have poor sleep – they drag through their day sluggish and tired. Their bodies crave some quick energy, so they snack on some high-calorie junk food. That extra junk food leads to more fat, which leads to……you get the picture.

You have to be active if you want to stay healthy and alive. Being active equals great life.

Get more active with  these workout plans:

Workout plans and more 

Strength training can make a big difference in keeping bones strong and healthy. Whether you actually gain bone or hold on to it depend on how much you stress, or overload the bone.

If you can get anything from this article, this is it: Strength training preserves bone better than walking or running.  

Load is more important than repetitions, so a small number of repetitions with a heavy load stimulates bone formation more than walking or jogging, where you can do thousands of repetition but the load is light.

How much is enough? You shouldn’t be able to do more than 15 repetitions in 2 or 3 set of exercise. On the other hand, if you can’t do 8 repetitions, it’s too much of a load.

To build a stronger bones, try one of my two simple and effective strength training plans:

Workout plan #1 – simple, effective and safe all-body-machine-resistance workout

Workout plan #2 – more extensive intermediate all-body-workout with combination of machines and free weights

In study of nearly 2,000 residents of Alameda County, California, people who were more active were nearly 20 percent less likely to be diagnosed with depression over the next 5 years than less active residents.

Being physically active helps if you are already depressed.

More intensively you exercise, better you feel, less depressed you are.

I know people, who work out intensively every day to overcome fear, anxiety and the result usually is: they feel very confident, they have very strong minds, they are mostly in very good mood, and they are very decisive.

I also see it on myself. After I had a flu recently, I could not work out for couple of weeks, and I felt not only week physically, but also mentally. I could really feel the difference in my mind.

What is interesting, I felt kind of week mentally, only after two weeks of not exercising. I can’t even imagine the negative feelings of a really inactive person.

For the best effect, try to exercise every day at least 30 minutes, combine resistance workout with cardiovascular workout, and if you are a regular exerciser, don’t be afraid to speed up a little or do a few more of those hard repetitions at the end of the set, and you will really feel great.

It happens earlier in women than in men, but in both genders muscle starts to wither away if it’s not used.

University of Maryland’s Ben Hurley and Coopers Institute’s Steven Blair point about muscle mass loss and inactivity:

• Muscle atrophy for people with average activity levels starts at age 40 for women and in the late 50s for men

• For every decade after about age 50, you lose some 6 percent of your muscle mass, which comes with a 10 to 15 percent loss of your strength

• Anyone can build muscle back up with strength training exercises. After two months of training, we see a 40 percent increase in strength

• The earlier you start, the better. But even people over 100 years old can partially reverse some of the loss that occurs with aging

• The trick is to not just use the muscle, but to overload it. You have to make it work harder than it’s accustomed to

• If you overload it in a gradual, progressive way, you can make the muscles bigger and stronger by making each muscle fiber thicker