Episode 30: Let's Talk About Exercise

Viewing exercise as a way to “earn” your food, especially when it comes to weight loss, is problematic, both for how we think about food AND exercise. Today’s episode dives into why we need to separate physical activity from the grasp of diet culture. We also review what the physical activity guidelines actually say (and spoiler alert: you’re probably doing better than you think).

Episode Transcript:

I don't remember a time when I didn't equate exercise with dieting. Everything I learned about activity was always centered on being smaller.

INTRO MUSIC: Welcome to The Compassionate Wellness Podcast. I'm Alex Treanor. I'm a Nationally Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and I am so excited you're here. The wellness industry is full of do's and do not's, should's and should not's. But I like to take a different approach. I'll be sharing all things health and wellness from a joyful, real-life compassionate perspective. If you're ready to drop the cookie-cutter approach and create a life you truly love, while eating a cookie or two along the way, let's dive in.

Hey, Friends! It's good to be back this week! I missed you last week. I took the week off from recording. I mentioned this in the little preview last week. But I took the week off from recording and just enjoyed time with family and relaxing and it was very nice.

One of the experiences from last week, actually, is what is inspiring this week's episode. I took my dog Rusty over to the park, I think it was maybe Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving. There's this great park by us. He really loves it. It's huge so there's so many different places to explore and walk around. We were walking through this soccer field area and there was this older gentleman also walking near us. As he crossed our path, he chuckled to himself and he said "I'm only out here walking so I can go back and eat more food".

And I know it's a joke. I know it's a joke. And I smile, and I nod and I "oh yeah, I know, Happy Thanksgiving", you know, I play nice. And in my head, I just cringe a little bit. I know it's a joke. But when we think about exercise that way, it just is one of those things, we all have those things that just kind of rub us the wrong way, and that's it for me. Because you don't have to earn food, you can eat what you want. I feel like that's just a principle that I live by, that I teach, that I work with clients on all day. It's just such a diet mentality to feel like you can only eat more food if you go out for a walk beforehand. So that's what I want to talk about today. Because the words matter. It is a very common thought and it is something that I think we feel kind of rolls off our shoulder, like it doesn't really play an impact. But the words and the things that we tell ourselves, they do impact us. This whole podcast, every episode, comes back to the way that we think about food, the way that we think about our lifestyle choices and how all of those things have such a profound impact. And that is where true change comes when we look at our thoughts and change our thoughts then our actions our behaviors also change.

So today, I just want to dive into this idea of how we can look at exercise or movement or physical activity, and how and maybe why it should be separated from our eating habits and our food choices.

For me personally, I think this is a sensitive topic because for so long...I don't remember a time when I didn't equate exercise with dieting, like those two things were just so intertwined. In my mind, the way I learned about movement, about physical activity was always in the context of burning calories. Or when you're dieting you should also be exercising that these two things are important together. Everything I learned about activity was always centered on being smaller.

Absolutely physical activity is part of maintaining our weight. But a lot of the research even shows that it's actually, it's very helpful for maintaining weight, but it's not even that helpful for losing weight, something that we hear about it being enmeshed with all the time. They're not even that connected. Because when we look at the actual facts and figures, let's say you walk for a mile, generally speaking, and this is of course different for everybody, but you usually burn somewhere around 100 calories. A banana is about 100 calories. So when we think about it, we're going to have to do a lot of activity to burn calories enough to significantly impact our weight. It's a lot of movement that's required for that.

What usually happens is we don't think about that and we overcompensate so we say "oh I exercised today. I can eat more or I need to eat more", and we actually end up overdoing it. So it just doesn't really connect unless we're very focused on it and I just don't know a lot of people that have hours to exercise every day in hopes of changing their weight that much.

The other problem that comes when we think about exercise being related to food or dieting, is it becomes problematic for both how we think about food and exercise. We start to view food as being a reward, something that has to be earned, which is not a healthy way to think about food. And we also start to view exercise or activity as a punishment, something that has to be done in order to come back down to a baseline or to find a neutral ground with your eating habits for that day. So the way we think about food and the way that we think about activity are both impacted in a negative way when we link them together when we view them as things that have to be done to counteract each other.

The more I've learned about activity, the more important it has become for so many reasons other than maintaining weight. This is where I get a little bit bummed that I was never taught any of these things. I knew exercise was good. But the first reason that always came to mind was because of dieting, or because of being smaller or burning calories. But exercise and physical activity is so important for our overall health and wellness. It's literally such a game changer. And when we think about it only connected to our food choices or being a way to earn food, we underestimate the power of activity.

I've gathered a little list here of just some of the benefits. This is not even an all inclusive list. This is just some of the benefits that I have come across briefly while I was preparing for this episode. So when you are physically active, you have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, type two diabetes, high cholesterol. Lower risk of certain types of cancers, specifically, bladder cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, endometrium, esophagus, kidney, lung, and stomach cancers. Lower risk of dementia of anxiety, depression, emotional eating and stress.

Then on the positive side, physical activity helps improve cognitive function, our quality of life, our sleep, our bone health, our physical function, muscle function, flexibility, balanced mood and brain health.

That's a huge, huge list. And the thing that's so cool about it is, these benefits are both immediate and long term. So you can feel an improved mood from just a few minutes of exercise. And you can also reduce your risk for these chronic diseases by just a few minutes of exercise.

The other thing that's really cool about all of these benefits is that they are there regardless of if your weight changes. You can do exercise and have your weight stay exactly the same lose no weight at all and you still get all of these benefits. I think sometimes we feel like, "oh, there's so many benefits of losing weight, and I lose weight by changing my eating, and by being more active". But you can get those same benefits by being more active or looking at your eating habits without weight loss being a requirement.

So far, we've used several different words for this idea of movement. We've talked about exercise, about physical activity, movement in general. Movement is the general term that's going to be any type of movement throughout the day, right? If you stand to go change the laundry, or you're standing while chopping vegetables for dinner, all of those things count as movement. Physical activity or exercise are things that are a little bit more structured, that get your heart rate up. Things that require a little bit more. But all movement can be helpful.

I thought it may be helpful to look a little bit at the physical activity guidelines, what is actually recommended, because I would take a risk and say that you're probably doing better than you think you are. It doesn't have to be overly complicated.

I hear so often from clients like "what's the best type of activity? What do I need to do in order to get whatever benefit?" and absolutely different exercises, different movements have different benefits. That all depends on your goals, right? And anything that you do is better than nothing.

So let's dive in. There's actually four recommendations. These are updated every 10 years or so. The most recent guidelines came out in 2018.

The first one I'm going to read it exactly as it is written. So it says "Adults should move more and sit less throughout the day. Some physical activity is better than none. Adults who sit less and do any amount of moderate to vigorous physical activity gain some health benefits". So basically, anything is helpful. So if you want to go for a walk, if you want to do some stretching, if you want to dance with your kids, all of that is helpful. It's not to be discounted as not enough because any movement is helpful. I actually was also reading a study earlier this week that talked about activity that said, if you are currently doing no activity, if you have a sedentary lifestyle, and you increase to 75 minutes a week of brisk walking, so that's like five days of 15 minute walks, or about 10 minutes of walking every day, that alone can add up to two years to your life, which I thought was really cool. The biggest increase that we see in a lot of the research is from going from no movement to something. Something is helpful.

The second guideline says "for substantial health benefits, adults should do at least 150 minutes to 300 minutes a week of moderate intensity, or 75 minutes to 150 minutes a week of vigorous intensity aerobic physical activity, or the equivalent". That one got a little bit wordy. Basically, what it's saying is, if you're doing a moderate intensity activity, you'll want to aim for 150 to 300 minutes a week, if it's a higher intensity than 75 to 150 minutes a week.

Intensity, when it comes to activity, is measured in a couple of different wayss. You can use your heart rate, if you have like a heart rate monitor or I don't know if a Fitbit, I imagine a Fitbit has a heart rate monitor, I have an Apple watch that shows me my heart rate. So you can calculate your target zones of what would be a moderate intensity versus a more vigorous intensity. And you can monitor which type of activity you're doing that way.

Or you can also use something called the talk test. If something is a low intensity activity, you can probably whistle, you can probably sing, you can do a lot of talking in that activity. For a moderate intensity activity, you can probably have a conversation and speak in sentences. But there's probably like a pause in between, right? Like you say a sentence, you take a breath, you say another sentence. It's a little bit more tiring to talk while you're in that activity. And for a high intensity or vigorous intensity activity. That's where you could probably only get out a word or two at a time, right? Like your sentences are broken up, you're just trying to speak when you can in between breaths, that's going to be more vigorous.

Our third guideline says that "additional health benefits are gained by engaging in physical activity beyond that 300 minutes of moderate intensity activity". So what was mentioned in that second guideline. We talked about those initial guidelines, but the more activity you do, the more beneficial it will be.

And then the fourth guideline says that "adults should also do muscle strengthening activities of moderate or greater intensity that involve all major muscle groups on two or more days per week, as these activities provide additional health benefits". So that is where our strength training comes in muscle building activities, things that are also really good for bone health. That is recommended to try to aim for two days a week of using all your different muscle groups.

In the past, I have felt the activity needs to be exhausting, or have to be completely out of breath, or I have to be doing it at the gym, for it to count as exercise. And none of that is true.

All the guidelines are telling us is that we should try to get our heart rate up for 150 to 300 minutes every week and we should do some kind of muscle strengthening exercises at least twice a week. That's it. That's doable.

We also can't forget that first guideline that even if you don't hit 300 minutes or even 150 minutes, if you can get 50 minutes, that's still better than zero minutes. That's built into the guidelines!

Something that I thought was interesting when this came out in 2018 is they actually used to have a recommendation or a guideline that said, exercise has to be done in at least 10 minute increments for it to be effective. And they took that out. So there's enough research that that is no longer accurate. If you could do five minutes do your five minutes. If you can do three minutes do your three minutes. All of it is helpful.

Some of the benefits we talked about, about reducing risk of chronic disease, some of those things do require a little bit more activity just like that third guideline says. The more activity we do, the better off, we'll be. So sure, there are certain benefits from more high intensity exercises, especially for your cardiovascular system. And if that is a concern for you, it definitely is worth thinking about how can you get that more higher intensity activity.

But if you have a completely exhausting day, you can also go for that 20 minute walk and still get some cardiovascular benefit and still get that mood benefit and still feel better overall, and be caring for yourself in a positive way. It's flexible and I just think that is so awesome, that there are all these benefits of activity, all these positives, all these things that can have such a profound impact on our life, regardless of weight change, regardless of how much you eat. Exercise is helpful, regardless of what your goals are.

If you don't care about weight, or if you do care about weight, exercise is important.

I hear that a lot with some of my more corporate clients, where they will say, "Oh, I don't need to exercise because I'm not trying to lose weight right now". And I'm just like...but exercise is so necessary on its own.

I know we mostly talk about nutrition here. But that conversation at the park really inspired me this week to just brag about activity a little bit and how cool it is. Because I think sometimes I forget to talk about how how awesome that is and how beneficial it can be to get out and go for a walk or to do a little bit of yoga, or to go for a run, do something a little bit more high intensity. There's benefits from all of these different things. It's just a matter of finding what we enjoy what works for our schedule that can look different every day. You don't have to have a structured bodybuilding schedule. If that's not what you're wanting, if you don't care about that, that is not necessary. You can do different things. And if that is what you want, go for it. But it's completely your own. Just like nutrition, you can build your activity routines into something that you truly love and that you feel is beneficial.

That's what I've got for you this week. Just a little reminder about activity especially as we're heading into the holidays because I know that mindset comes in of like, "oh, I need to earn my food". And you don't have to earn your food, you can enjoy your food and you can also enjoy your movements.

I hope you have a wonderful week. I hope you had a good holiday good kickoff to the holiday season. We are here in December now which is wild. But I hope you have a wonderful week and I look forward to talking with you again next week.

OUTRO MUSIC: Thanks for joining me on this episode of the compassionate wellness podcast. If this message resonated with you, please share it with someone you care about. I'd love to connect with you as well follow me on Instagram @alextreanor.coaching, or visit my website alextreanorcoaching.com. And as a reminder, Treanor spelled kind of goofy, it's T-R-E-A-N-O-R. For any references mentioned in this episode, be sure to check out the show notes. I hope you have a wonderful day and don't forget to make time for something you enjoy.

References:

• Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd edition 2018