One of the biggest problems that I face in my work is that many people react to the mere mention of change with loathsome thoughts and feelings. People tend to get stuck in certain eating and living habits which have benefits that they enjoy, such as favorite types of meals which happen to be fattening, and enjoying relaxing at the end of a working day instead of doing exercise. Its unfortunate that for many people it takes a buildup of a lot of negative influences in their life to start to be open to change, or enough of a good incentive to be lured into change.
This is a problem in an individual sense, in that if a person living this way does not intervene with their lifestyle their weight and risk of poor health are likely to keep growing indefinitely. The loathsome thoughts and feelings are a negative influence to improving this scenario, but is there a bigger picture influencing this?
What I notice is that a great part of the problem is our food and exercise culture. What is considered normal for the average Australian is a life without any exercise, high consumption of processed foods, high consumption of meat and animal products, and a much smaller relative consumption of whole plant-foods.
In most cases, except for the current youngest generation, it all starts in primary school. The canteen is full of meat pies, sausage rolls, sandwiches with white bread and jam, sugary drinks, sugary ice blocks and hot chips. Exercise is really only related to sport, and if you don't like sport then there is no mention of exercise for the sake of exercise. For many, this continues all the way through high school and later life.
Some scary statistics of our country include:
- Approximately 60% of Australians do not exercise at all.
- Approximately only 20% of Australians exercise enough to protect their health.
- Australia has some of the highest rates of obese and overweight people in the whole world.
- 86% of Australians do not eat an adequate amount of vegetables each day.
- 46% of Australians do not eat an adequate amount of fruit each day.
- The average Australian consumes 30% too much saturated fat, related to consuming too much meat and animal products.
- 1% of Australian women aged 15-49 consume the recommended intake of folate, a crucial nutrient during pregnancy.
When you look at health statistics, this starts to paint a scary picture:
- The most significant predictor of chronic disease second to smoking, is lack of physical activity.
- 1 in 3 people in Australia die of heart disease, a lifestyle related preventable disease.
- There is building research evidence that a high consumption of meat and animal products increases the risk of cancer.
- Some researchers believe that 60-70% of the influences to cancer are preventable and lifestyle related.
- Australian and other Western countries have the highest rates of type-2 diabetes and cancer.
Considering that regular aerobic exercise is a powerful protector from heart disease, and only 20% of the population are likely to be exercising enough to enjoy the full protection, its not surprising that 1 in 3 people will die of heart disease.
You may argue that the problem is not quite as bad as I make it seem, however as I alluded to in my previous post on nutrition ( http://thehealthmind.blogspot.com/2010/06/my-favorite-health-food-shop-fruit-and.html ), other parts of the world that live very differently to us have far better health and a fraction of the chronic diseases that we have in the West. Provided that they have their basic needs met for health such as hygiene and available medical services, they also often have very long life expectancies. As soon as they migrate to the West they pick up the same disease rates as us, so its not their genes that are protecting their health.
Enough of the grisly talk on death and disease. When considering the food, exercise, and health culture (or lack of) in Australia, do you really want to be part of the status quo? When someone suggests to you than an unusual amount of exercise and rabbit food (whole plant-foods) is going to help, is it such a shock and burden when everyone else around you are part of the lifestyle disease epidemic? Is it really worth getting angry and outraged to be asked to live differently to what seems normal, and to what you are used to?
Time to look around you.
Practical tip: Make your own mind up. Decide what is best for you regardless of what everyone around you chooses to do, and regardless if its threatening to their way of life. You need to decide whether you want to be part of the status quo or not.
When starting to increase your amount of exercise, make it manageable and enjoyable. Keep it regular and build yourself up. You don't need to go straight to running marathons.
When trying to improve your diet, investigate low-GI foods for weight loss. If you want to have better health, try to meet the 5 vegetable and 2 fruit a day guideline for a start.
Alex Budlevskis
Exercise Physiologist
Rozelle Total Health
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
#2 Most common reason not to exercise - "I didn't feel like it".
I want to start this post with a disclaimer once again. I believe that everyone is entitled to making their own choices about when to exercise or not and if they want to exercise at all. Similar to my last post the goal of this one is to consider a new perspective on exercise.
One of the most common pitfalls I observe in people trying to adopt regular exercise is choosing not to exercise based on emotional reasoning. What I mean by emotion reasoning is that when they are about to leave for their workout and are deciding whether to go or not, if the person does not feel like it they often wait for the right emotion or excitement to push them into action and help them make their decision. When this exercise friendly emotion does not appear they decide to skip the exercise session and do something else, and also usually rationalise their decision to ease their guilt (e.g. "I really need to catch up on xy and z", or "its okay I'll make sure I go tomorrow"). Rather than using an objective reason to make the decision such as an honest cost/benefit analysis of exercise, or whether you actually have the time or not, the emotional state at the time is used to make the decision. Essentially, for the person who uses emotional reasoning, when the time comes for the planned exercise session if they feel tired, stressed or generally down, they choose not to exercise.
This may seem perfectly reasonable at first glance. If you don't feel like doing something then why do it? Really? Once again, it is every persons choice as to what to do with their time and when. The problem with using emotional reasoning for your decision is - when I ask most regular exercisers "how often do you actually feel like having a workout?", they almost always answer "barely ever". After I ask some more questions they often report to only feeling like exercise around 5% of the time or less.
Here lies one of the first major road-blocks for someone attempting to adopt regular exercise - If you only exercise when you feel like it, you will barely ever get out the door. The other problem with using emotional reasoning is that once you have given in to this type of decision making once, it gets a lot easier to do it a second time and a third. After a few times it starts to get easier not to exercise at all instead, and the next thing you know it might be off the books again.
A lot of people talk about "building a habit" when it comes to adopting exercise and this is true when it ties in with emotional reasoning. You need to build a habit of exercising regardless of how you feel at the time. Otherwise the prevailing habit of choosing not to exercise will be strengthened, especially at times when you don't feel like it. Just like anything worth having it will probably require some hard work, effort and sacrifice to build a new habit of regular exercise.
Research on the emotional state of people who exercise report a good boost in energy levels and reduction in stress levels directly after an exercise session, and after four weeks of regular exercise people usually experience a powerful anti-depressant effect. Even if you might not feel like it before, I can bet that you will be happy that you did it afterward.
Practical tip: If you know that you are an emotional reasoner, have some strategies in place at the time that you are about to exercise to counter this scenario. You know best about what strategy is likely to work for you, but some that have worked for others are:
- Writing a table with the costs and benefits of regular exercise and having it ready to review whenever in a tough moment.
- Asking a friend or family member to give you some tough love when you are second guessing your workout, and to not give you any incentives to skip the workout.
- If you do push yourself out the door even if you don't feel like it, give yourself a (healthy) reward.
- Having your exercise clothes and water bottle (or whatever you need) ready and near the door so that you have less time to dwell on the fact that you don't feel like it.
- Remind yourself that most people only feel like exercise 5% of the time, so just push yourself out the door regardless of whether you feel like it or not.
- Before the workout score between 1-10 your energy level, stress level, and general mood on one half of a piece of paper. Fold it so that you can't see your answers and then re-score yourself after the workout. Was it as good or bad as you had imagined?
There are some scenarios where it is not a good idea to exercise at all however they are very few. These depend on any specific medical conditions that you may have. Some more universal situations where it is okay not to exercise are:
- When you are running a temperature/fever. If you have a cold but you do not have a temperature/fever then light to moderate intensity exercise is generally still okay.
- If you are experiencing "bad pain" during exercise - Pain that gets worse and worse the longer and the more frequently you exercise. If you do experience any pain during exercise it is best to consult your doctor or exercise physiologist to determine whether it is a "good" or "bad" pain, and whether any rehabilitation strategies need to be used.
- If you have been told by a valid health practitioner not to exercise, or you have been told by a health practitioner that you have an absolute contraindication to exercise (unlikely as these are usually only very severe medical conditions).
Alex Budlevskis
Exercise Physiologist
Rozelle Total Health
One of the most common pitfalls I observe in people trying to adopt regular exercise is choosing not to exercise based on emotional reasoning. What I mean by emotion reasoning is that when they are about to leave for their workout and are deciding whether to go or not, if the person does not feel like it they often wait for the right emotion or excitement to push them into action and help them make their decision. When this exercise friendly emotion does not appear they decide to skip the exercise session and do something else, and also usually rationalise their decision to ease their guilt (e.g. "I really need to catch up on xy and z", or "its okay I'll make sure I go tomorrow"). Rather than using an objective reason to make the decision such as an honest cost/benefit analysis of exercise, or whether you actually have the time or not, the emotional state at the time is used to make the decision. Essentially, for the person who uses emotional reasoning, when the time comes for the planned exercise session if they feel tired, stressed or generally down, they choose not to exercise.
This may seem perfectly reasonable at first glance. If you don't feel like doing something then why do it? Really? Once again, it is every persons choice as to what to do with their time and when. The problem with using emotional reasoning for your decision is - when I ask most regular exercisers "how often do you actually feel like having a workout?", they almost always answer "barely ever". After I ask some more questions they often report to only feeling like exercise around 5% of the time or less.
Here lies one of the first major road-blocks for someone attempting to adopt regular exercise - If you only exercise when you feel like it, you will barely ever get out the door. The other problem with using emotional reasoning is that once you have given in to this type of decision making once, it gets a lot easier to do it a second time and a third. After a few times it starts to get easier not to exercise at all instead, and the next thing you know it might be off the books again.
A lot of people talk about "building a habit" when it comes to adopting exercise and this is true when it ties in with emotional reasoning. You need to build a habit of exercising regardless of how you feel at the time. Otherwise the prevailing habit of choosing not to exercise will be strengthened, especially at times when you don't feel like it. Just like anything worth having it will probably require some hard work, effort and sacrifice to build a new habit of regular exercise.
Research on the emotional state of people who exercise report a good boost in energy levels and reduction in stress levels directly after an exercise session, and after four weeks of regular exercise people usually experience a powerful anti-depressant effect. Even if you might not feel like it before, I can bet that you will be happy that you did it afterward.
Practical tip: If you know that you are an emotional reasoner, have some strategies in place at the time that you are about to exercise to counter this scenario. You know best about what strategy is likely to work for you, but some that have worked for others are:
- Writing a table with the costs and benefits of regular exercise and having it ready to review whenever in a tough moment.
- Asking a friend or family member to give you some tough love when you are second guessing your workout, and to not give you any incentives to skip the workout.
- If you do push yourself out the door even if you don't feel like it, give yourself a (healthy) reward.
- Having your exercise clothes and water bottle (or whatever you need) ready and near the door so that you have less time to dwell on the fact that you don't feel like it.
- Remind yourself that most people only feel like exercise 5% of the time, so just push yourself out the door regardless of whether you feel like it or not.
- Before the workout score between 1-10 your energy level, stress level, and general mood on one half of a piece of paper. Fold it so that you can't see your answers and then re-score yourself after the workout. Was it as good or bad as you had imagined?
There are some scenarios where it is not a good idea to exercise at all however they are very few. These depend on any specific medical conditions that you may have. Some more universal situations where it is okay not to exercise are:
- When you are running a temperature/fever. If you have a cold but you do not have a temperature/fever then light to moderate intensity exercise is generally still okay.
- If you are experiencing "bad pain" during exercise - Pain that gets worse and worse the longer and the more frequently you exercise. If you do experience any pain during exercise it is best to consult your doctor or exercise physiologist to determine whether it is a "good" or "bad" pain, and whether any rehabilitation strategies need to be used.
- If you have been told by a valid health practitioner not to exercise, or you have been told by a health practitioner that you have an absolute contraindication to exercise (unlikely as these are usually only very severe medical conditions).
Alex Budlevskis
Exercise Physiologist
Rozelle Total Health
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