Category: Staying Motivated

It seems that at least once a month, some sort of senior fitness competition is featured on the sports page of local and national newspapers. The Senior Olympics was the forerunner of these types of events, and the designation quickly morphed into the National Senior Games. Soon localities and municipalities began hosting their own senior track, swimming, and ironman competitions. Sociologists would call this a trend.

However, just as younger national-class competitive athletes and professional sports stars are not representative of the population at large, none of these senior athletes is representative of seniors as a group. The important takeaway from the surge of senior athletic events is that anyone at any age can become physically fit and maintain high levels of health and fitness. It’s not necessary to achieve an extraordinary level of competitive fitness. What is necessary is to be a person who is fit, healthy, and well.^1,2

With very few exceptions, any person, regardless of her or his current status, can become physically fit. The steps to take have been well described over many decades. Broadcast, print, and online media are saturated with articles and programs dedicated to teaching people how to lose weight and start exercise programs. In reality, everyone knows what he or she needs to do. One big step is portion control. Most adults consume far too many calories per day, much more than they need to maintain daily metabolic requirements. In contrast, for most adults, a daily diet containing 1800 healthy calories per day would result in substantial weight loss. The next big step is to begin and maintain a long-term exercise program, consisting of at least 30 minutes of exercise five days a week. A healthy diet and regular exercise, maintained over time, will result in ongoing high levels of physical fitness and wellness.³

But, if everyone knows what steps to take to accomplish these goals, why isn’t everyone physically fit? The answers, for specific individuals, may be complex, but the overall answer is lack of motivation. Merely knowing how to do something isn’t enough. You have to want to do something. You have to have the desire to do it. There has to be something in it for you. Having your spouse, doctor, or even religious counselor tell you you need to lose weight and start exercising will never get you to stick with the program. In order for you to make meaningful change, you must provide the motivation yourself.

Importantly, this internal motivation needs to be ongoing. There may be times when you do some binge eating or stop exercising. But the secret is to find the means of re-motivating yourself and returning to your fitness programs. By doing so you will derive tremendous satisfaction and gain real, long-term health and wellness.

¹Buford TW, et al: Optimizing the benefits of exercise on physical function in older adults. PM R 6(6):528-543, 2014

²Hills AP, et al: Physical Activity and Health: “What is Old is New Again”. Adv Food Nutr Res 75:77-95, 2015

³Myers J, et al: Physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness as major markers of cardiovascular risk: their independent and interwoven importance to health status. Prog Cardiovasc Dis 57(4):306-314, 2015

Let’s say you’ve been taking some time off from the gym. Maybe you reached the end of your 12-week training cycle and you’re taking a week off. It’s possible that one week turns into two or even three or four weeks. Life happens, you need to attend to some pressing matters, and going to the gym starts to take a back seat. Before you know it, two or three months have passed by. Suddenly, you’re no longer a person who goes to the gym, but a person who needs to figure out a way to get back to the gym on a regular basis. “What happened to me?” you wonder. “Where did the time go?” Now you have to actually exert effort to fit “workout time” into your schedule. You scratch your head and ponder. “I thought I had this all covered,” you think, not for the first time.

What happened to you and your well-made plans was entropy, that insidious force in the universe that turns order into disorder. The basic rule is that any organized system, left unattended, will immediately begin to break down. As a mundane example, those piles of papers on your desk keep reaccumulating as a result of entropy. The weeds in your garden? Entropy. The dust bunnies in your attic and basement? Entropy. The collapse of your plan for doing regular workouts? Entropy.

What’s worse, entropy takes a serious toll on your physical fitness.^1,2 If you miss enough time from the gym, all your fitness gains begin to melt away. First, your muscles begin to lose their stores of energy. Glycogen, the complex sugar that supplies energy for muscle work, is broken down for use elsewhere. Arterioles and capillaries, small blood vessels that were needed to supply nutrients to your growing muscles, are no longer required and rapidly disappear. Muscle fibers that were continually added to support your exercise activities are cannibalized, so that their constituent parts may be used for other physiological processes. Entropy launches a process of randomization that breaks down your carefully built-up muscular structure. Your body, being very smart, metaphorically swoops in and moves all those metabolic components to other structures and systems for more efficient use.

The superficial result is loss of muscle definition. The deeper result is loss of muscle tone.³ Your cardiorespiratory system (heart and lungs), digestive system, and metabolism are all affected, as these physiologic systems are no longer required to be functioning at peak to support a regular vigorous exercise program. Entropy sets in to all these systems, as well. The overall result is a profound impact on your health and well-being.

The good news is we can help keep entropy at bay. But doing so requires attention and determination. We want to attend to our bodies as carefully and regularly as we attend to the environment of our home, office, and garden. Just as our cars, motorcycles, and bicycles require periodic maintenance, our bodies require much more frequent care, care on a daily and weekly basis. It’s fine to occasionally skip a week or two, or even a month if needed, of exercise. But we must make sure we get right back on schedule to ensure benefits to our short-term and long-term health.

¹Barwais FA, et al: Physical activity, sedentary behavior and total wellness changes among sedentary adults: a 4-week randomized controlled trial. Health Qual Life Outcomes 2013 Oct 29;11:183. doi: 10.1186/1477-7525-11-183

²Loprinzi PD, Lee H: Rationale for promoting physical activity among cancer survivors: literature review and epidemiologic examination. Oncol Nurs Forum 2014 Mar 1;41(2):117-25. doi: 10.1188/14.ONF.117-125.

³Ricci-VItor AL, et al: Influence of the resistance training on heart rate variability, functional capacity and muscle strength in the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Eur J Phys Rehabil Med 49(6):793-801, 2013