Q&A for How to Improve Physical Fitness

It strengthens your muscles, helps you burn calories, gets your heart rate up, and improves your overall metabolism. There are just so many benefits. You'll feel and look much better if you make sure you get regular exercise.

A lot of people don't realize that your metabolism is actually your muscle. So the more lean muscle you have in your body, the faster your metabolism will churn through calories, even when you aren't working out. So keeping your metabolism up is a huge part of staying fit.

All foods (except perhaps some vegetables like celery and cabbage) will add body weight if consumed in large enough portions. If you are trying to gain weight, look at increasing your healthy fats with foods like nuts, avocados or fish. To gain muscle you'll have to eat more protein. It is important to keep nutrition high so don't skip lower calorie foods like vegetables, but do try to increase calorie intake to gain weight.

That all depends on how effectively you exercise, whether you have good nutrition and whether you rest effectively. To get some idea of how you compare to others, have a look at the standards set by the President's Challenge (https://www.adultfitnesstest.org/). Most military and police forces have online guidelines for fitness requirements and these are generally fairly high. One worth looking at is the FORCE Test] for Canadian military (https://www.dfit.ca/forceprofile/english). Try the test to see what areas you need to improve and where you make the grade!