Forget You Even Know the Word Exercise: Choose to Move

Had another great conversation with a world-class medical investigator today, whose specialty is diabetes. Once more, the topic turned to the impossibility of getting middle-aged and older adults to exercise.

Maybe the real problem is the word itself. Exercise brings forth images of weightlifting, jogging, calisthenics. (Cripes, a shudder just went down my spine: I hated PE when I was a kid!)

The American Heart Association has the right idea and they call it: Choose to Move.

Here at the AHA meeting, investigators reported on this national Web-based intervention program. The 3,796 women in the organization’s national 12-week Choose To Move program were provided weekly activity guides and requested to complete surveys on activity, quality of life and readiness for activity.

Researchers evaluated 892 women who completed the program. Participants improved their activity from a median 240 to 343 kcal/week. What does that mean? Glad you asked. In daily conversation, the word calorie is used instead of the more precise scientific term kilocalorie. When a fitness chart says you burn about 100 calories for every mile you jog, it means 100 kilocalories.

So, we burn calories when we are active (notice I did not say the E word) and all these women did was increase the number of calories burned in a week by a little over 100 calories – and their body mass index improved from 29.3 to 28.9 kg/m2 after 12 weeks. Also, they were scored on how much energy they had and their overall well-being; both improved with such a small increase in activity.

Forget jogging; depending on your weight, 100 calories would be about what you would burn in a 20-minute walk. That is do-able for just about anyone!

For more than 2 years now, I walk 2.2 miles with my youngest son (he’s 16) every night. Eric and I are both in much better shape.

There is an old saying, “Use it or lose it.” Don’t think about the E word. Exercise is something we did in school and we either loved it or hated it. Sadly, that became our mental image of exercise and now we think we have no time or energy for that. Or we just think we would look ridiculous in our old gym suits. The trick is to realize that all you need is a different point of view: move it or lose it.

NOTE: The American Heart Association has a FREE 12-week online nutrition and fitness program. Go to http://bit.ly/9dNfAu