This Really Works!
Hello Thorny Roses, and welcome!
You might be looking at the workout programme and the way I suggest you tackle exercise and be thinking: “Is that really going to make any difference?”
If you are already an elite athlete, the answer would be no, you wouldn’t see any real improvement in your fitness or strength following this programme, and you might already have the nutrition and mindset and stress management and so on nailed down.
If you are anything short of super fit, however, the answer is yes, not only will this make a difference, but it will make more of a difference, if you commit to a truly daily practice, than a 30 minute daily workout. There’s a surprising study (see links below) that shows that when individuals are otherwise sedentary, but work out for half an hour a day, their metabolic profile - that is, how well they regulate blood sugar fluctuations - is no better than someone who is entirely sedentary!
That’s really surprising. Whereas, people who are on the move and sit much less have a far better metabolic profile.
The “snacks” - little bits of exercise throughout the day (see the other link below)- work well because they cause your muscles to uptake glucose, and this in turn reduces the amount of sugar in your blood. It also keeps your cortisol levels low, and cortisol is really not a woman’s friend, by and large. “Cranking” yourself up from rest also takes quite a lot of energy, and kickstarts the various processes required to get the body moving, and it’s this inefficiency that makes this approach work well. So, oddly, 3 ten minute walks are better for you than one 30 minute walk, and 2 minutes of brisk activity (brisk walking, walking up or down stairs) every 20 minutes can halve your blood sugar levels! That sounds like it would be a little disruptive, but actually our concentration spans are such that this method (popularised as “pomodoro”) can be very productive. Whether this exact protocol would fit into your life, something like “OTHEH” or just moving whenever it occurs to you can make a huge difference. Various watches and devices will happily remind you to get going.
It can require a bit of a change in mindset. Be less efficient if that would involve more movement. Take a few items upstairs at a time, not a whole basket. Take one or two dishes into the kitchen, don’t use a tray. Sashay around the kitchen rather than walk. Have just one phone charger that you have to move around rather than one in every room - that sort of thing. You are looking to increase your activity levels in whichever way you can. I mean, of course, try not to annoy everyone around you, but no-one needs to know if you are sneakily isometrically engaging your core muscles, or doing a few pelvic floor exercises! There’s a name for this: Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or NEAT, and studies show what we essentially know - fidgeting burns energy.
Just briefly, I do want to get away from the “calories in vs calories out” mantra. It’s not that there isn’t some truth in it, and you probably have - at least when you were younger - experienced some success, if you were trying to lose weight, with eating less and exercising more. But it’s a much more complicated picture than that, and really what we are looking to do, in my opinion, at least, is to fuel our bodies in such a way that we have energy and can willingly engage in physical activity because that physical activity brings many benefits. It’s not that we are trying to conform to some punitive ideal of feminine beauty, but that having a good strength to weight ratio -that is, more muscle and less fat - makes moving through our lives and performing our necessary activities easier, more enjoyable, and less likely to injure us! We aren’t so much seeking to “boost our metabolism” so we can be super slim, it’s more that having effective blood sugar control means we avoid the peaks and crashes that cause such awful inflammation and lead to a not very helpful cycle of continually seeking out sugary foods. This has all been connected to some terrible health outcomes. It’s about health and vitality, and having a body that’s willing to “burn energy” means having that energy available to us. Just worth a little contemplation.
I know that most of us have some body issues, or have done so, and a complicated relationship to food and exercise. I’d just like to offer the opportunity to reframe our perspective into something a little less triggering, a little more positive.
Let me know how you get on. How easy did you find it to add bits of activity into your life? If you had a tracker of some sort, did it detect a difference? Did you find yourself less prone to blood sugar spikes and crashes? You might also find any aches and pains easing a little.
Thanks for being here. It all makes a difference.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/01/04/exercise-...