“I hurt too bad to exercise.”
“I’m too fat to be seen in a gym.”
“I’m so lazy.”
“I don’t have any time to exercise.”
“I’m too tired to work out.”
“I’m too old to workout.”
“I’ll injure myself if I work out.”
“I hate exercise.”
As a functional medicine physician, I often hear these excuses from my patients as we’re discussing exercise recommendations as part of a well-rounded treatment plan for their chronic conditions. In my former life as a personal trainer, you can bet I heard all of the above and then some! Heck, I’ve even said some of these excuses out loud on occasion (and in my head on too many occasions to count).
Beyond excuses, my patients are also held back by some of the more common myths around exercise. These myths are perpetuated by Women’s Health and Self magazines alike (to name only two out of dozens of “health” magazines). If you’ve ever looked closely at the research that is touted in these magazines and on popular web sites, on television with so-called fitness gurus, and in best-selling books, you won’t be hard-pressed to find one expert conflicting another expert’s advice. Heck, sometimes the same expert will conflict themselves from the January issue of a magazine to the July issue of the same magazine!
If there’s only one myth out there that I can put in its grave for you, then please give me the shovel and let me dig. Let’s bury the idea that “you have to work out an hour a day, 5 to 7 days a week to see results.”
Whomp, whomp. Umm…no! I can’t say NO emphatically enough around this old, hauntingly outdated misinformation. Don’t become the next victim that doesn’t get started moving your bones because some expert is telling you that you need at least 5 to 7 hours a week to dedicate solely to exercise. You can get great health-benefits in half that time! If you’re willing to “push yourself”, you can see benefits in even less time!
What I mean by “pushing yourself” is that intensity of exercise trumps duration of exercise every last time. Science shows that short bursts of intense activity have more benefit for health and for weight loss than long drawn-out, boring, hour-long sessions of steady-state activity. I encourage you to train for shorter bouts of time with more intensity. Before I lose you (yes, I saw your eyes roll back in your head like some sort of zombie at the thought of doing intense activity), know that the best part is that YOU determine what feels intense…not anyone else. Not your trainer, not your boss, not the goblin next door.
If you’re a couch potato, here’s the best news…you won’t have to push yourself too hard at first to feel that your exercise is intense. Couch potatoes actually get more bang for their buck than seasoned exercise veterans do when it comes to gains and benefits of an exercise program. Before I lose you to the “I’m-gonna-get-injured excuse”, the next best news is that you’re less likely to be injured as a result of short bursts of repetitive activities like swimming, biking, weight training, than if you committed yourself to longer training sessions.
While the good-news train is rolling down the track…you don’t have to get all of your exercise in at once. Do what you can do, when you can do it, and let all of your bursts of activity in a day add up. As a busy physician and dad to 5-year old twins, I hardly ever have an hour to spare for working out anymore. Gone are the self-indulgent days of heading to the gym for an hour or more, but I daresay that I don’t have 5 to 10 minutes here and there and these minutes add up!
Do you have 5 to 10 minutes here and there in your day? Start making them count! I recommend the free, online video library called Activity Bursts Everywhere with Dr. Esser. Check the library out at www.abeforfitness.com. He has compiled exercises that can be done at home, in the office, or even in your doctor’s waiting room. The videos are 3 to 8 minutes in length and don’t require any equipment more special than you. Totally doable, now that we’ve buried the you-gotta-work-out-7-hours-a-week myth! Go forth and be active–even if it’s only for 3 minutes here and there.
Recent Comments