Many of us know we should exercise more, but just knowing the fact doesn’t necessarily motivate us to get off the couch. The mental gymnastics surrounding this way of thinking were recently covered in an online presentation by The Brain Docs, Dean and Ayesha Sherzai.
Over years of clinical practice, they’ve repeatedly seen a few pitfalls that engulf aspiring exercisers time and again. In the piece below, we pick up their conversation as Dean considers some of the excuses they commonly come across.
Dean: First, you might think that you cannot maintain an exercise habit for long. Maybe you’ve tried to form an exercise habit many times before. And so you might think that you’re not the exercise type, you have no willpower, you hate being sweaty, or you just don’t have time. In other words, there are unchangeable factors that will cause you to fail again and again.
Ayesha: But as we’ve learned during this course, the reason you failed, if you ever have, is probably because you didn’t understand how your brain likes to be motivated. So now you’re going to focus on creating habits that you can accomplish easily and consistently so your brain starts getting heaps of dopamine that it starts associating with exercise.
Dean: Believe it or not, after a couple of months of this, you will start to crave exercise.
Ayesha: Another pitfall is just jumping into exercise without being checked out and evaluated by a healthcare professional. As you get older, there are more and more things that can happen to your body that may limit the types and intensity of exercise that are good for you, especially when you get started after being sedentary for a while.
Dean: Some of these challenges include high or low blood pressure, cardiac diseases like cardiomyopathy, neuropathy, which can lead to falls, degenerative bone diseases and muscular-skeletal problems, especially in your joints.
Ayesha: So if you aren’t in the best shape and exercise hasn’t been a part of your life, then it could be smart to get feedback from a healthcare professional or even work with a physical therapist on how to do it safely before diving in.
Dean: Another set-up for failure is having unrealistic expectations.
Ayesha: We see this in many people who used to be athletes who think that they should be able to perform at their highest level right off the bat, even if those high levels were when they were in high school and they trained for hours a day.
Dean: If you think exercise should lead to weight loss, you might give up on it when it doesn’t fulfil that goal.
Ayesha: It’s important to note that exercise can’t compensate for poor nutritional choices. You can’t outrun, outlift, or out yoga a bad diet. It’s true that exercise burns calories, but any calories you burn with exercise can be regained quickly if you’re making suboptimal food choices.
Dean: Like all attempts at habit formation, you’ll set yourself up for failure if you don’t take the time to set clear, achievable, smart goals and keep yourself accountable with some kind of structure, like a workout buddy or a well-designed workout app.
Ayesha: You can also fail at exercise if you don’t know what to do. There are dozens of ways to hurt yourself at the gym and even more ways to go through the motions with very little benefit. Getting injured can be really demoralising. So make sure you educate yourself on effective and safe exercise protocols.
Dean: Another common pitfall is to ignore the necessity of daily stretching.
Ayesha: Without it, you might get sore and stiff, lose range of motion, and be injured.
Dean: Be regular about stretching, and you will grow in your ability and feel much better about your body.
Ayesha: Now, peer or celebrity pressure can also trip you up if you see an exercise someone else did on TV and think it’s the one you must do. The only right exercise is the one you enjoy, want to do, and is doable, given your limitations and resources.
Dean: The key is to find what works for you.
Ayesha: like tennis, ping-pong, dancing, swimming, aerobic classes, biking with a group, jogging, or simply a brisk walk.
Dean: You can find the exercise style that fits your character and your interests. But most importantly, the bonus points are when you are involved with a group or community you enjoy.
Ayesha: Lastly, don’t depend entirely on equipment for your workouts. Sure, machines and gears can be fun, and we use them ourselves, but the reality is that they can break, or when we travel, we don’t have access to them, or a pandemic closes the gyms.
Dean: So, make sure you have a contingency plan that requires nothing but your body don’t jump into expensive equipment purchases right away.
Ayesha: We’ve seen many patients buy a fancy treadmill or an elliptical trainer and use it for a few weeks, after which it serves as a bulky clothes hanger. Your brain can interpret an expensive purchase as having done something, and so it’s satisfied from this purchase without feeling the need to actually use it.
Dean: Behavioural researchers have a term for this: self-licencing. Self-licencing is when you do a good thing to justify a subsequent lapse and behaviour.
Ayesha: It’s just a different version of eating the cheesecake for dessert to reward yourself for getting the salad as a main course. As you take steps to figuring out what’s your main course of exercise will be, think about enlisting the support of your primary care. Check-in with them and yourself about what are realistic goals and exercises to prevent injury and make your goals about you. Not someone else, and pick something that you can do anywhere, anytime. And if you can, get moving now.
Editor’s Note:
Lately, we’ve been engaging in some brief acts of exercise. We say brief because they were quite consistent for several weeks until Catherine injured her right foot after engaging in a low-level jog at the end of our usual 30-minute daily walk. “The injury took many weeks to come right, and I completely identify with what Ayesha says above about how ‘demoralising’ an injury can be”, Catherine says. Overall though, we can certainly attest to all the benefits that the Sherzai’s explain. Steady working up almost any course of regular movement has truly positive effects. P & C
