Are You Proud of Your Year?

Achieving fitness goals makes us feel good about ourselves
Photo: Daniel Almond

One of the things I love to do at the start of the year is to really look at what I’ve achieved over the last 12 months.

Fulfillment and achievement elevate a hormone in the brain called dopamine, which makes you feel good about yourself.

Seeing how much you’ve accomplished can give you a quick hit of dopamine and motivate you for the year to come.

Some of the greatest benefits can be found in examining your exercise routine for the past 12 months.

For example, a quick review of our office showed that between four of us we completed approximately 9,000 kilometres running, cycling and swimming in the last 12 months, even though all of us have very busy lives and families.

Irrelevant of the advances in biochemistry, genetics, pharmacology and pathology, the fundamentals of maintaining good health and physiology have always remained the same. Eat well and exercise.

“Seeing how much you’ve accomplished can give you a quick hit of dopamine and motivate you for the year to come.”

Unfortunately, with advances in modern alternative and traditional medical practices, these fundamentals are often forgotten about or ignored.

Part of the reason for this is that many don’t understand why we need to exercise. Exercise can be seen as something that needs to be done to maintain weight or to compete. But the truth about exercise is far more important.

As we exercise we deprive our muscles and other tissues of oxygen. When this occurs our system raises our heart rate and our blood pressure to accommodate this change. As we do this frequently, the body looks for better ways to oxygenate tissues.

One of the main ways it does this is through angiogenesis (the creation of new capillaries to deliver blood).

These new capillaries then provide greater enrichment of our tissues with blood resulting in greater oxygen and nutrient delivery, greater removal of waste and improved recovery even when we are not exercising! The result is a healthier body.

“We need to give our bodies enough time to understand what we are asking of it before we start working hard.”

Whilst any exercise is better than no exercise, excessive amounts of exercise, known as overtraining, can elevate our stress hormones and actually cause the degradation of our bodies.

For this reason, smaller amounts of exercise performed frequently provide the body with the best opportunity to adapt to the changing requirements of exercise. Of course as fitness and endurance improve, this can then be increased.

A simple start for someone who hasn’t done any form of consistent exercise for a while would be 20 to 30 minutes of brisk walking 5 to 6 days a week for 4 to 6 months. After this, it should be fine to increase the intensity or time.

But we need to give our bodies enough time to understand what we are asking of it before we start working hard.

Just because the mind thinks you can run a marathon by the end of the year doesn’t mean the body is ready to start hard periods of training.

Get motivated to exercise without putting undue pressure on yourself
Photo: Jim Bahn

Here are a few ways to ensure you get your 30 minutes of exercise in:

1. Don’t Do It for Your Health or Weight

Exercising for health is a poor reason to exercise. Your subconscious will motivate you to get going until it feels your health has improved. Once you start feeling better, your motivation to continue will decrease.  

In order for most people to maintain exercise patterns long-term, there needs to be a social component (catching up with friends) or it needs to be for a specific achievement (I want to run in a marathon by the end of the year).

2. Turn off the TV

The biggest reason people don’t exercise is a lack of time. Turning on the TV when you get home from work is the biggest way to lose time.

Put on some music instead. You’ll quickly be saying “what should I do now?” Otherwise get to bed half an hour earlier and get up half an hour earlier. That half an hour five days a week will be worth 130 hours of exercise for the year!

3. Support

Exercise should be part of a lifestyle. People tend to become the people they spend a lot of time with. Get the whole family exercising.

On those dull, cold days when you just want to curl up in front of a fire, having your child or partner eager to get out and go for a run can be really motivating.

So don’t just commit yourself to being active – commit the entire house!

4. Take the Opportunity When You Get It

So many people have kids that are involved in Aus Kick, Little Athletics, Swimming, Basketball, Soccer and etc. Don’t waste this time.

That 30 minute swimming lesson the kids are having right now could be a 30 minute swim for yourself.

Don’t waste the time. Use it wisely.