“Those who do not find time for exercise will have to find time for illness.”
– Earl of Derby
Picture this: there’s a new medication on the market. I can guarantee you that you know at least one person in your life who would benefit from taking it. Doctors are amazed at this drugs ability to lower cholesterol, reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes (and if you already have type 2 diabetes, it significantly improves your outcomes), it lowers your blood pressure, it manages weight and strengthens your bones. It can even be used to treat depression and anxiety. Interested yet? It will lower your risk of heart disease. It can prevent dementia and Alzheimer’s.
It prevents falls in the elderly. It reduces stress and inflammation for young and old.
Surely a drug like this would have side effects, right? Well, when correctly and individually prescribed for you, those risks are managed. So what on earth is this miracle? Where can I get it?
It’s exercise. The best form of exercise is one that you’ll enjoy, and do regularly.
The recommended dose is to accumulate 150 minutes per week (an easier way to picture this is 5 x 30 minutes). Start with walking – it’s free. You don’t even need a prescription.
Most of us inherently know that exercise is good. Unfortunately, as humans, the promise of long term risk reduction is not significant enough to prompt behaviour change.
It appears that the mental gymnastics required to picture ourselves in old age, for better or worse, doesn’t scare anyone into taking action. So what do people who exercise regularly have in common? They certainly aren’t always more privy to the benefits of exercise than everyone else. Some people don’t even consider the health gains when they step out on their morning walk. So let’s further explore what it takes to make an exercise habit, and how being active can create a positive upward spiral in other areas of your life.
habit. noun\ hab·it
- a usual way of behaving: something that a person does often in a regular and repeated way
- a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up
- an acquired behaviour pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary
The way that humans change behaviour has been extensively studied and can be distilled down to six stages, according to the Transtheoretical Model. This can be applied to exercise, as below:
- Pre-contemplation: An individual has no intention to start exercising, with little to no awareness of why it applies to them. It’s a fair assumption to say that anyone reading a book titled ‘Creating the Life That You Want’ is not in the pre-contemplation stage, but you might certainly know somebody who is!
- Contemplation: More time is spent considering the negative consequences of not engaging in exercise. A little attention may be given to making a change, but the true desire to take action needs to come from the individual, not external sources. So perhaps your doctor has told you that you need to exercise, but it doesn’t quite fit within your values yet. We will explore some ways to exit the contemplation stage later in this chapter.
- Preparation: The words ‘enough is enough’ come to mind here! Finally the see-saw of decision making has tipped in the direction of change, in this case, becoming more active. Commitments to self are made in this time, and you might actively be researching a gym/fitness class/way to exercise more. Ideally, preparation involves gathering information to make an informed decision. People who rush the preparation phase often have to come ‘back to the drawing board’ once more.
- Action: Interestingly, this is usually the shortest phase. There’s a high risk of lapse/relapse, but we’ll learn more about that in a moment. You might try different styles of exercise in this time, figuring out if you’re a morning person, or whether or not you enjoy the gym. Regardless, the goal of any action phase is to find an element of this new behaviour which sticks.
- Maintenance: This is a great phase to get to. As the name suggests, this stage is about assimilating your new exercise habit and making it ‘the new normal’. We also have to navigate disruptors in this phase – how do we exercise when we’re on holidays, or busy, or tired?
- Lapse/relapse: To make a long-lasting behaviour change is to accept that we might move up and down multiple stages, at any time in the process. Instead of berating yourself about missing gym, or not hitting your targets in a particular week, it is helpful to reframe your relapses as successfully getting back into routine. This way, we strengthen our resolve, and can reflect upon what didn’t quite go right this time around. This requires a strong level of mindfulness and self-compassion.
Did you identify which stage of change you fit into at the moment? Perhaps you can reflect on a time where you were in maintenance, but now find yourself back at contemplation. Remember to view each ‘slip’ as a strengthener for the next time that you get to that phase. Regardless of which phase you’re in, let’s look closer at the strategies and skills required to create a healthy physical activity habit.
