Change Your Life: Living Skillfully

One thing, I think, that often puts people off starting exercise is the idea that they need to exercise like a professional athlete in order to get any benefit: Join a gym, go jogging every morning at 5am, fill the garage with exercise machines, or do a Marine-style “boot camp” programme.

If your state of health and motivation are such that those things are appropriate for you, go right ahead, of course, but if you’re a sedentary person who hasn’t done much exercise, if any, for years, and the idea of starting just seems way too large, here are some suggestions for an easy lead-in. Once you build up a degree of fitness and start to feel the benefits of exercise, you may well want to do more, which is great. Start out gently, though, with these simple ideas:

• If you live or work in a multistory building, take the stairs instead of the lift. Look for opportunities to go upstairs and downstairs, rather than avoiding them. For example, I work in the lower story of a two-story house. There’s a bathroom downstairs, but I often use the one upstairs instead.
• If you live within walking distance of the shops or even the postbox, start taking opportunities to walk down there to post your letters or pick up a bottle of milk or a newspaper, rather than driving. (It’ll save you money as well.)
• If you drive to work, look for opportunities to park a little further away from work and walk (assuming that this is safe given the hours you work and the location).
• If you take the bus to work, get off one or two stops earlier, at each end if you can.


photo credit: TheeErin

• Go for a walk at lunchtime. Get colleagues to join you.
• Join in your kids’ games, if you have kids. If you don’t, consider borrowing someone else’s that you know.
• Put on some vigorous music and clean the house. Extra points if you move furniture (carefully – lift with a straight back).
• Weed the garden. If you don’t have one, offer to weed someone else’s.

I blogged a little while back about a study done in Denmark in which participants were told to follow essentially the reverse of the advice above – they reduced their daily steps from 6000 to 1400, driving and using elevators whenever possible. Within two weeks the speed at which they cleared fat and glucose from their bloodstream had dropped markedly. Slow rates of clearing these substances from the bloodstream is one predictor of chronic disease. So it appears that even doing a little exercise can have a significant health effect.

For more advice in the same vein, see the National Heart Foundation’s publication on Physical Activity, which gives guidance on how to build up gradually.

What’s your plan to become more active for better health?

Technorati Tags: health, physical activity, exercise, sedentary, training, tips, lifehacks, gtd, motivation

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