If it is your wish to become fitter and healthier, then starting a new exercise routine will help greatly with that. Obviously, you will need to change your diet choices, and opt for the low-fat options, over the tastier ones. All you need to do now, is decide on the kind of exercise that you want to do, and whether or not you want to do it indoors or outdoors. Indoors is perfect for those people who are just so caught up in their jobs, that they may only have 20 to 30 minutes in the morning or the evening, to exercise. For others, that have a little bit more time, the outdoors is perfect for them.

The benefits.

With that in mind, the obvious choice is cycling, whether doing it on mountain bikes, or standard bikes, it is a great way to get fit, and also to see a lot more of your country, that you haven’t had time to look at, up until now. The benefits of cycling are too numerous to list here, but I’ll try to cover just a few of them.

• It improves mental well-being – If you lead a more physical and active lifestyle, then your mental health will improve as a result. Cycling really gets the heart beating, and this increases the amount of adrenaline and endorphins flowing through your body. These essential chemicals help to make you much happier, and they quickly improve your mood. Cycling gets you outside in the fresh air, and you get to enjoy the scenic routes, as you pedal to greater fitness.

• It helps with weight loss – Depending on how fast you cycle, and the intensity, it is quite possible to burn up to 1000 calories in an hour of cycling. When you consider the amount of calories that a man and a woman need to consume every day to stay healthy, it would be quite easy to burn a lot of calories on a cycle ride. This will allow you to lose excess weight, which can only be beneficial for your health.

• It builds muscle & lung capacity – Cycling is essentially a resistance exercise, and so as well as burning fat, it also helps greatly with building muscle, especially in your legs. It also helps to give you a shapely backside. Cycling increases your heart rate and this means that you breathe in more oxygen, and this helps to give you better lung capacity. Cycling also cuts the risk of developing heart disease and cancer by as much as 50%.

As you get older, you need to be careful with regards to the exercise that you choose to lose weight. Picking an exercise that is low impact is crucial, if you want to protect your ankles, knees, and hips. Cycling is a very low impact exercise, and the number of injuries received while cycling, is much lower than those who go running to keep themselves fit.