Exercise is essential to good nutrition. Although you may eat a good diet, even high quality food does not become nurturing nutrition until its assimilated into your cells and utilized by your body. Exercise is an important part of this process.

Thirty minutes of moderate exercise, at least three or four (preferably six or seven) days a week, is not only good for cardiovascular health, but it also contributes to five of the six stages of nutrition digestion, absorption, assimilation, circulation and elimination. Exercise actually supports the seventh and final stage of nutrition - utiliaztion. For example, exercise benefits digestion by stimulating the contractions of intestinal muscles and helping food move efficiently through the digestive tract.

Emotional stress has the opposite effect. It draws blood and oxygen away from the gut, interfering with the production of digestive secretions and impairing absorption of nutrients. But, exercise is a great stress reducer. It strengthens blood vessels, which improves circulation of nutrients and oxygen through both the vascular and lymph systems. For even more stress relief, exercise boosts the release of endorphins - the happy hormones that help you to feel good.

And any diet guru who tries to minimize the importance of exercise to weight loss is only telling people what they want to hear, because exercise is vital to healthy weight management. It helps you lose weight more easily and keep it off permanently. You not only burn calories during exercise, but it can speed up metabolism for as long as 12 hours or more afterwards. Plus, it improves carbohydrate and blood sugar metabolism as well as insulin sensitivity. These are all important factors in healthy weight management.

Exercise also contributes to regular elimination of waste products through the release of toxins by sweat glands and by stimulating healthy bowel movements. Just getting up and taking a walk is often all you need to prevent constipation.

So, for optimum nutrition utilization, which is the seventh stage and the bottom line in any sound health and nutrition program you MUST include regular daily exercise.