Lauren
Gelman
Want to keep your
arteries clear and your heart beating strong? Integrative cardiologist Joel K.
Kahn, MD, coaches his patients to adopt easy exercise routines with these
motivating tricks.
First, stop telling me you have no
time to exercise.
It’s the top excuse I
hear from patients when I suggest they get moving. But you do have enough time;
what you really need is motivation. Too often people think of exercise in black
or white categories: “thirty minutes” or “no minutes.” In reality, any minutes
of movement are better than none. Here are some of my favorite tricks to get
patients started on exercise routine.
Don’t ignore exercise.
It’s powerful medicine
for your heart and arteries. It strengthens your cardiovascular system,
allowing the heart to pump more blood with less effort. It keeps your arteries
elastic and flexible, which allows them to expand to accommodate blood flow,
which reduces blood pressure. It makes your tissues more sensitive to insulin,
which means cells throughout your body more easily absorb and burn blood sugar
for energy. It helps lower levels of triglycerides, tiny packages of fat that
float around in the bloodstream. Exercise also helps tamp down inflammation and
prevents blood clotting, which can lead to stroke, heart attack, and other
problems. Finally, exercise creates physiological changes in the brain that
lead to an increased sense of well-being, confidence, and an improved mood. And
it’s not as hard as you might think. Here are 6 ways exercise betters your
brain.
Take a 5-minute walk.
It’s true that the
American Heart Association recommends that we plan 150 minutes a week of
moderate exercise. But if you can’t always meet this goal, should you do none
at all? No! Less activity than the AHA guideline is still beneficial. Even a
five-minute walk will bring you some amazing health benefits.
What’s most important is this: get started.
For one study,
researchers followed the health habits and outcomes of more than 400,000 people
for eight years. They found that the people with low levels of physical
activity (they averaged about 15 minutes of exercise a day) showed a 14 percent
reduction in death compared with the completely inactive group. People who were
more active showed even lower mortality.
Never fast-forward through a
commercial.
For every two hours
you spend in front of the TV, your risk of becoming obese jumps 23 percent and
your risk of developing diabetes increases 14 percent. This is true even if you
exercise regularly. You don’t need to cut out TV time altogether—you just need
to learn how to multitask. Mayo Clinic endocrinologist James Levine, who has
spent his career studying the effects of exercise on health, says that
converting TV time to active time could allow some of us to shed 50 pounds in
one year!
How about a few
sit-ups or push-ups during commercials? How about a five-pound dumbbell lifted
overhead 15 times with each arm for a 60-second break? If that seems like too
much, at the very least, don’t ever take a commercial sitting down. Use every
commercial as a cue to get up and move. Don’t miss these 17 gym hacks to make your workout less of a
chore.
Stop thinking of yourself.
That is, practice
active acts of kindness. Because one way to motivate yourself to get in small,
regular bouts of activity is to do them for someone else. Dedicate small acts
of exercise to the good of someone you love, the happiness of a stranger, or
the good of society. For example, return your shopping cart to the store rather
than leave it in the lot near your car. (Do it as a favor to the kid whose job
it is to go gather all the carts). While you are out shoveling snow, clear your
neighbor’s walkway too. Get up and stand on the bus or subway so someone
else can have your seat.
De-motorvate your life.
Time-saving devices
(think dishwashers and elevators) save more than time: they also prevent you
from burning calories. Mayo Clinic researcher James Levine found that habits
like using a dishwasher rather than washing dishes by hand, driving to work
instead of walking, and using the elevator instead of taking the stairs cause
the average person to save 111 calories a day. Over time, that adds up to 10
extra pounds a year. Whenever possible, try not to motor your way through life.
Use a broom or rake instead of a leaf blower, your body instead of a remote
control, or elbow grease instead of an electric mixer.
Don’t take waiting sitting down.
We stand and wait a
lot: at the grocery store, at the bank, at the post office, at the ATM, at
amusement parks. And that’s just the waiting we do standing. A lot of it we do
sitting down. Consider a doctor’s office waiting room. Or what you do during
the average 10 to 20 minutes each of us spends on the telephone each week? Try
to stand and move as much as possible while you find yourself waiting.
Depending on where you are, you could march in place, do a few laps around your
house, try a few stretches, or climb a flight of stairs.
Get a pedometer.
Measure how many steps
a day you take, then set a goal to increase the amount by perhaps 500 steps a
day for a week, then jump it up again to the next level. New habits such as
these will get you there: Park as far away as possible from the entrance to
work. (I do this every day, and enjoy a 10-minute walk each morning and each
evening). Spend half of your lunch hour walking. Propose a walking meeting with
colleagues if you don’t need access to a computer during the meeting. Take a
short walk whenever you arrive to a destination a little early. Here are 10 reasons you’re better off
with a pedometer than that fancy fitness tracker.
Don’t throw in the towel if you miss a
workout, or a week.
There are two critical
times when people fall off the exercise wagon: after a really busy period at
work and after a vacation. They skip one workout and then another and then
another. Soon they’ve gone a week or two without exercise and they think, “why
bother? I’ve lost everything I gained.” But this isn’t true at all. In fact,
Duke researchers proved this when they put 183 out-of-shape, overweight men and
women at risk of developing heart disease through the paces of an
eight-month-long exercise plan. Once they got everyone in shape, they wanted to
see what would happen if everyone then blew off their workouts. So they asked
all the participants to take two weeks off. They learned that all was not lost.
Participants’ triglycerides remained low and their HDL cholesterol remained
high.
So recommit yourself
to exercise as soon as you can. Cut back on intensity and duration as you ease
yourself back into the swing of things.
Take vitamin Y (ie, yoga).
Yoga is like
four-for-one exercise. Most people don’t realize that certain types of yoga
count as cardio. It also strengthens your muscles, so it counts as weight
training too. Of course, it gets you flexible. Finally, the emphasis on breath
work and the power of your thoughts make it a moving meditation. Some poses—such
as Tree and Dancer’s Pose—also improve your balance, preventing falls. Studies
have also linked yoga with a healthier heart rate pattern, less atrial
fibrillation, and lower blood pressure. Start with a beginner’s class or DVD.
Even yoga once a week for 15 or 20 minutes offers flexibility, mental focus,
and relaxation.
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