Archive for the ‘Strategies’ Category
Monday, August 17th, 2009
Have you wanted to know why women gain weight after menopause? In this post, you will learn about important research on this topic as told to me by Dr. Heidi IglayReger of the University of Michigan.
So far, this is what we know: As you might be aware, estrogen, the primary female sex hormone, significantly decreases as women approach and then go through menopause.
Dr. Heidi IglayReger told me about the following new research documenting that the presence of estrogen in female rodents increases spontaneous activity. Though humans and rodents are clearly quite different, estrogen may also influence spontaneous activity in women. While this has not been proven in humans, if it were to be the case, postmenopausal women might be less active than they were pre-menopause because of decreased estrogen. What may be the key is what is meant by “spontaneous activity”.
Naturally, it includes planned activity, such as attending a group fitness class or going for a walk or run. But more likely it has to do with unplanned, and often unnoticed daily activity, such as standing up longer before sitting down, picking up around the house more frequently, or even fidgeting more - things that women (and men) do without realizing that they are moving”. Individually, these small changes in physical activity may not make a significant difference, but overtime, decreased physical activity without a matching decrease in food intake will cause weight gain.
This research suggests that by mindfully adding more brief periods of spontaneous physical movement to your day you might be able to prevent the weight gain that is associated with menopause. The simple solution to move more may appear to be easy. But while coaching women in midlife I have found that many, if not most, women have difficulty believing that these small amounts of lower intensity movement actually “count”. Intellectually, it makes sense, but when it comes to purposefully doing it and fitting it into your life it’s a different story. I advocate to clients that they LET THEMSELVES override the old outdated notion that only vigorous and lengthy exercise sessions are valid, and accept that fact that intentionally taking a parking space father away from the entrance or and taking the stairs instead of the elevator several times a day, among many other types of spontaneous movement, not only count but are extremely valuable.
In the EssentialSteps program I do with clients, I refer to spontaneous movement as “Opportunities to Move” because embedded in that concept is the value of creating time and space to move. When we move more, we feel better. Moving more accumulates throughout our day. Research suggests that moving more can improve our health.
But I’m more interested in promoting more physical movement as a way to enhance women’s daily sense of well-being. Why? Because my research shows that improving “health” isn’t a very compelling motivator for women in midlife who are, in general healthy. What we mid-life women want is to feel good - about ourselves and about our bodies.
Dr. IglayReger’s bottom line: Even though scientists are still searching for answers, post-menopausal weight gain may not be inevitable and may in fact be preventable through more brief physical movement throughout the day.
My bottom line: Moving more throughout the day will give you more energy, get blood flowing, decrease stiffness, help clear your mind, and will just help you enjoy every day more.
So what’s getting in YOUR way of moving more during your day?
As you know, I’m now blogging for More Magazine. If you want to hear my ideas more frequently than you do through the blog, you can sign up to be alerted when I post weekly on More at my profile:
http://www.more.com/user/profile/1204 . Under my photo just click on “Be notified when member publishes”. (You’ll be prompted to sign up for more.com, and then redirected to click on this option.)
I always welcome your comments, whether you want to share your own experiences or disagree with my perspective. Please tell anyone you think would be interested to check out my blog.
Dr. IglayReger summarized the research above about rodents under the direction of Dr. Peter Bodary when she was a post-doc in the Vascular Biology Laboratory in the School and Kinesiology. She continues research in the area of physical activity and body weight as the the laboratory manager for the Laboratory for Physical Activity and Exercise Intervention Research at the University of Michigan.
Posted in Exercise Intensity, Strategies, Women's Motivation | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 24th, 2008
New Prescription Paradigm for Exercising
My newest study was published last week in Women’s Health Issues. We found that when mid-life women set exercise goals to lose weight or improve health, they spent significantly less time exercising than those with goals to improve well-being and to reduce stress.
The longitudinal study, released last week in Women’s Health Issues, sampled healthy women who were between 40 and 60 years old and worked full-time. We collected data on women living in the Midwest at three intervals, including one-month and one-year periods. The subjects answered questions about how much they exercised, what their exercise goals were, and how committed they were to achieving these goals.
Although regular physical activity helps prevent cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, diabetes, depression, osteoporosis, among many other illnesses, most mid-life women do not exercise enough. Understanding which types of exercise goals motivate women to exercise, and which ones don’t, can offer clues to developing better strategies to help women exercise more and prevent these devastating conditions.
We wanted our research to be practical for women and their physicians to easily understand and use. Our findings suggest that the typical way that most women approach exercising may be undermining their participation in it.
It is important to note that these findings challenge how society thinks about exercise. It’s counterintuitive. Instead of prescribing exercise to prevent disease, healthcare providers who emphasize physical activity as a means to enhance women’s quality of life might better facilitate long-term participation among healthy women, making disease prevention more likely.
Our research indicates that women are more committed and are more likely to plan exercise into their daily lives if they know that exercising will make them feel better immediately. Unfortunately, the standard approach to exercise taken in our culture has mainly taught Americans to consider exercise as a type of medicine to prevent disease and lose weight. It turns exercise into something we should do rather than something we want to do. This undermines and harms women’s motivation and participation.
The study also revealed another trend: women who exercised to lose weight reported exercising less than those who worked out to maintain their weight, regardless of how much they weighed.
Because research shows that exercise is effective for maintaining weight but less so for losing weight, we think that women who exercise to lose weight may not see results. Thus, they get discouraged and may quit working out.
So how can this research be used to help a woman exercise more? Healthy midlife women will embrace exercising if it nurtures them, not depletes them. Both my coaching with women and the research I’ve conducted show that women are more likely to be hooked on exercise and make it a priority if their reason for doing it is to enhance their day rather than prevent an illness that they may never get. Ironically, taking a life-enhancement approach to exercise results in midlife women improving their health and controlling their weight.
Bottom Line: With life enhancement as your goal, you are more likely to choose physical activities that you enjoy doing, making it much more likely that you will stay motivated and remain physically active.
Implications for successful weight loss: Physical activity should be a behavior you do to enhance your well-being rather than burn calories. Regular physical activity will contribute to your long-term successful weight control, but to do so you need to sustain it over time. Ironically, to achieve your weight loss goals, your reason for being physically active might need to be changed to improve your daily quality of life instead of burn calories.
If you have any questions about this study, or would like a PDF of this published study, just email me at michelle@essentialsteps.net or fitness@umich.edu and I’ll send it to you.
Warmly,
Michelle
Posted in Strategies, Women's Motivation | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
One of my wonderful clients made a great analogy between how differently we approach exercising than we do eating a meal. She said that sometimes we only have time to grab something quick, when we are on the go, as a meal. She pointed out that this strategy is acceptable to us for eating but not for exercising. Her point is very insightful and I want to expand upon it below.
Most busy women would never consider the concept that they have to cook an elaborate dish for EVERY meal. Why? Because we don’t have time to have our meals always be elaborate and great. We know that depending upon any given day and time, our eating strategies have to change. In general, we probably do have specific strategies we use for our and our family’s meals. However, we know that our meal plans can “go out of the window” at any point, and we’ll just have to improvise and often eat to a “lower standard” than we want and/or had planned to.
In contrast, many of us don’t give ourselves the same leeway for exercising as we do eating! We make exercise plans and goals that we feel we need to rigidly follow. We don’t give ourselves many options or give ourselves permission to be flexible with our exercise plans. So, when “life happens”, as it always does, most of us do not improvise with our physical activity/exercise plans, like we do with eating. The result of this rigid approach (e.g., one that does not permit improvisation or flexibility) is that we wind up not doing ANY physical activity. (We’d starve if we did this with eating.)
However, most people would benefit by developing a mindset about exercising that parallels their mindset about eating. We should have general strategies and goals for being physically active, but similar to eating, have flexibility, back-up options, and/or strategies. Similar to grabbing a liquid meal or hunk of cheese when we don’t have time for our planned sit down meal, when time is tight, and we can’t do our planned exercise session, let’s improvise and figure out the “next best” thing. It could be parking further away for your meeting, getting off the train 1-2 stops earlier, or asking a friend to walk after dinner. Whether it is later that day, the next day, or a “lower standard” of physical activity (is there really such a thing?!), give yourself the same permission to improvise with physical activity as you do with food. Follow this M. Segar recipe and you’ll have consistent on-going physical activity in your life!
Footnote: It is interesting that eating is considered by many to be “essential” to living our best lives, and exercise isn’t. Yet, having a more flexible approach seems to accompany eating more than with exercising. Why are people more flexible with the behavior that is, for the most part, considered more essential to living?
Posted in Strategies, Women's Health | 2 Comments »
