How to Start Moving When You Never Have
I met someone recently and was telling her about my health practice. She is about 60 years old, overweight, and didn’t move too well. She was wide-eyed at my description of how much exercise, yoga, and movement I’ve worked into my weekly routine as I practice later-life health. I’ve encountered lots of resistance from people on my health journey as they offer up all kinds of excuses and rationalizations, but I’ve never heard this one. She said she has “never been sporty” and that her level of activity has worked for her so far, so there was no need to change. I explained that based on all the research I had done on the benefits of a robust health practice in later life I wasn’t willing to take that risk for myself. And there the conversation pretty much ended.
As I thought about her reasoning, I considered all the scientific research I’ve been reading over the years. No matter how active you’ve been in your life, staying healthy—and possibly adding more years to your life—requires that you boost your activity level to include regular movement. This is not optional. There is simply no doubt that exercise, movement, and healthier eating increase your odds of staying healthier, living longer, and suffering less as you get older. People who haven’t moved much in their lives or haven’t been aware of healthier options may have a harder time finding ways to move more. It’s not part of their muscle memory and isn’t how they’ve experienced life. However, it’s important to recognize that the onset of disease and immobility can only be delayed by an active lifestyle and healthier eating.
Maybe you’ve never considered yourself to be “sporty.” Maybe movement and activity haven’t been a big part of your life, especially if your work involved more sitting than moving. Maybe you’ve been so busy working or looking after others that you haven’t thought about your long-term health and well-being. Maybe creature comforts such as food, screen time, and leisure are a big part of your life and you can’t envision giving them up. Maybe you’ve wanted to add some type of exercise or movement into your weekly routine but just haven’t had the time. Or maybe the idea of starting is so daunting that you put off even taking the chance. There are lots of reasons that the “muscle memory” of activity and health practices may not be part of your life. If so, what kind of baby steps can you take to begin protecting yourself from the prospect of a withering and more illness-prone body in the coming years?
Was I an Athlete? Not Even Close!
As a child in primary and high school I never considered myself to be athletic. I was one of the “smart” kids, known for brains and not sports ability. In gym class, I was usually one of the last kids picked when teams were chosen. At summer camp, I preferred the archery range to the baseball field. As I got older, my height gave me a little more credibility on the basketball court. And as I’ve written, I didn’t really start feeling comfortable in my body until I began doing physical labor during and after college.
When I moved to New York in my early 20s, it was walking that began to teach me the benefits of moving. I was a fast walker (and not a good runner at all), and I could usually get to places as fast on foot as I could if I took the subway or other transportation. And after walking, I consistently realized two things: 1) I felt better, had less anxiety, and was calmer, and 2) I could keep weight off more easily (or eat more) since I was burning more calories by walking. So, walking became my ally in life.
Cut to a Radical Idea
If life hasn’t already sent you a wake-up call, like it did for me almost 20 years ago, consider this idea, which I have come to believe over the past two decades: Your sedentary lifestyle, your resistance to movement and exercise, and your resistance to having a more intimate relationship with your health and your body is the first phase of a process—a precondition—that could lead to more serious disease. Later-life diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, dementia, and diabetes (aka the “Four Horsemen”), are responsible for the highest percentage of premature health issues. These diseases and disorders don’t just spring up out of nowhere. They need incubation time, when the body is starting to age and weaken, and the immune system isn’t functioning as well to keep them at bay. This usually starts happening in your 50s and 60s, and even earlier in some cases.
As we get older, our bodies naturally begin to lose energy and muscle mass (this is called sarcopenia). Plus, our immune systems are not able to manage the body’s housekeeping as well as before. The result is a build-up of “stuff that shouldn’t be there,” whether that is coronary plaque (heart disease), brain plaque (dementia), excess sugar (diabetes), or malformed cells that don’t get cleaned out or destroyed (cancer). Exercise and a nutritious diet mitigate these conditions by keeping your circulatory system, immune system, and other vital systems operating at much higher levels.
My own radical redefinition of disease includes the preconditions—the unhealthy lifestyles that many people lead (little movement coupled with a poor diet) as well as a general lack of awareness about their own health—as part of the arc of the disease they eventually develop. In other words, a disease actually begins to develop years in advance due to those preconditions—long before any symptoms of that disease show up.
Most people don’t want to link these 2 aspects of disease formation: their sedentary, non-health-conscious lifestyle and the actual medical conditions that result from that lifestyle. They are surprised when something seems to strike “out of the blue,” without seeing the link between how they have been living and the condition they are now facing.
Good news: Once you address the lack of movement and health awareness as the first phase of a disease, you are giving yourself preventive medicine: movement, healthier foods, and emotional and spiritual support.
Learning to Love, or at Least Like, Being Healthy
People who don’t lead healthy lives are at a real disadvantage because they don’t know what it feels like to be robustly healthy. Unfortunately, many people only wake up once they develop a medical condition or experience a health scare and, essentially, are shocked into changing their habits. Sometimes, for many people even that isn’t enough.
Exercise studies have found that willpower alone, while it might help kickstart a movement regime, cannot be sustained as the primary source of motivation. Sustaining regular movement at any level is more important than a once-in-a-while burst of activity followed by being sedentary. Find something you enjoy doing, and keep the pacing at the level where you don’t burn out and can do it regularly. Ideas include walking, taking a local yoga or Pilates class, swimming, biking, or joining a gym and using a personal trainer. Once you get into a regular rhythm, your body and healthy instincts will flourish, I promise you. Let your body’s natural instincts to move and feel energized become your guide to taking better care of yourself. Whatever type of movement you choose, think of it as a life-saving change that will lead to better health and many more healthy, vibrant days.
