The Life You Want

by Greene, Bob; Kearney-Cooke Ph. D, Ann; Janis Jibrin

  While getting the logistics down has been no small feat, I think what has most helped Tracy stay committed to exercise is her attitude. It has changed dramatically. Where she may have once resigned herself to any barrier that kept her from exercising, she now finds solutions to the problems. She doesn’t make excuses. She doesn’t let herself off the hook. If she can’t go to the gym, she knows she can always put on a pair of running shoes and jog around her neighborhood. When she’s feeling stressed out and lethargic, she reminds herself that she will feel less stressed if she exercises. “It’s kind of like when you’re sitting at home on the couch on a Saturday night and you don’t feel like doing anything, but then you rally, get dressed, put on some makeup, and go out. You’re always glad you did,” says Tracy. “Exercise is the same way. Afterward, you always feel happy you did it.”

  When I first met Tracy on The Oprah Winfrey Show, she was starting to experience some problems in her marriage. Since then, she and her husband have divorced. In that way, Tracy is like a lot of people struggling with their weight who also have some kind of underlying emotional issue dragging them down. The two are often intimately connected, and when that underlying issue is resolved, or when you get on the road to resolving the matter, changing your eating and exercise habits become easier. Ultimately, what Tracy really had going in her favor is that she made up her mind that she was done simply accepting things that were making her unhappy: a body that wasn’t healthy, a marriage that wasn’t working. She pinpointed all the things that she needed to do to improve her life, and, highly motivated, she did them to great success.

  GETTING PAST THE DISCOMFORT

  When I said earlier that our bodies are meant to move, I meant that literally. Our ancestors, after all, were hunters and gatherers; they didn’t have the luxury of sitting still. But we are also genetically programmed to rest when we can, and in this modern life, we can rest our bodies pretty much any time we want. As a result, exercise is uncomfortable. Most people aren’t used to it. But even as you do get used to it, there’s always going to be some discomfort. There needs to be in order for physical activity to have any payoff. All those benefits of exercise—the positive changes to the heart and lungs, the increase in aerobic enzymes, the strengthening of muscle and bone, the production of brain chemicals that improve mood—occur only when the body encounters physical stress and, yes, feels some discomfort.

  So I’m not going to sugarcoat it and tell you that you can walk around the block once at a leisurely pace and be done with it (although, if you’re doing absolutely nothing, walking around the block once is a good place to start). For real health and weight loss benefits, you need to raise your heart rate to appropriate levels and push some weights around. To some people, that actually feels good, but if it doesn’t feel good to you, you have to find a way to improve your tolerance and embrace the challenge.

  The good news is that your physical tolerance for exercise will improve with time. Just like your taste buds adapt when you switch to 1 percent milk after a lifetime of the full-fat version, your body adapts to physical activity, which makes it easier to move. But probably what’s more important is that you develop a mental tolerance for exercise, and that involves changing your thinking.

  It’s crucial, for instance, that you see exercise for the accomplishment it is. I’m sure there have been many instances in your life when you gritted your teeth and pounded something out. Maybe you’ve worked through rocky patches in a relationship or hung in there when a job wasn’t going so well. When you reap the rewards of not giving up, it’s a great feeling. Look at exercise the same way. I remember Oprah once telling me that when she first began exercising, she’d be on the stair-stepping machine at the gym, huffing and puffing at the lowest possible intensity level, then look to her right and see the woman on the next stair-stepper barely breaking a sweat, her intensity level all the way up to the top. It was disheartening. She kept at it, though, and soon she was up to the second level, then to the third and the fourth. It gave her a great feeling of accomplishment, and she wanted to keep that feeling going.

  I also remember that when Oprah and I ran the 1994 Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, DC, I looked back at her when we hit mile twenty-five and saw tears of joy streaming down her face. She still gets emotional whenever the subject of the marathon comes up. And with good reason. It was a fantastic achievement. But Oprah is also the first to admit that her weight ebbs and flows depending on how much exercise she’s doing, how she handles emotional eating, and how she balances her personal and very busy work life. The good thing is that, after running that marathon, she knows that she’s capable of hitting the “zone”: that place where exercise is giving you great health and body weight benefits and making you feel confident and capable.

  I don’t want to give the impression that you have to run a marathon (or even come anywhere close) to feel as though you’ve accomplished something. In my view, simply getting to the gym regularly or consistently taking brisk walks and lifting a few weights are great achievements. They should make you feel proud, and when you feel proud, it makes exercising all that much easier to bear. I’ll go even further and say that it changes you. When you accomplish something that you never thought you could achieve, it makes you look at the world differently. Suddenly, other obstacles in your life look less daunting, too. That’s no exaggeration. Seeing your intensity level on the elliptical machine rise—or noticing any sign that you’ve made progress—is going to lift your spirits and solidify your belief in yourself.

  Changing your mind about exercise and getting past the discomfort is all a process. The rest of this chapter is designed to help you navigate your way through that process. Before anything else, though, it’s essential that you zero in on why you want to exercise. Clarify your motives so you’re not just aimlessly out there doing something with no specific purpose. You’re going to have a greater chance of staying committed if you see exercise as a means to an end result that you really desire. The next step is to explore your attitudes about physical activity, which will help you better understand what’s gotten in your way in the past. Finally, you’ve got to own up to the excuses you’ve been making. If your attitudes toward exercise color the whole picture, excuses fill in the details. Excuses are what prevent you from being active on a daily basis, and I think I’ve heard every one of them—except a good one. It’s time to rethink your justifications for not being active. When you look at them closely, I think you’ll see that they don’t hold up. You really can fit exercise into your life.

  FIND YOUR MOTIVATION

  Earlier I mentioned that exercising can actually motivate you to improve other behaviors—in particular, your eating habits. But before exercise can motivate you, you have to be motivated to exercise, and that, of course, is the crux of the issue. There are many reasons why you should be physically active. But if those reasons don’t really matter to you—and I mean matter deeply—then you are not going to stick with exercise. It’s critical that you find a reason, any reason, that really resonates with you. Not with your significant other, not with your best friend, not with the magazine you subscribe to, not even with your doctor. It has to be something that inspires you and only you.

  The importance of a significant motivating factor is something I’ve seen again and again among my clients. But there is also good research—including a series of studies from Portugal—that shows the value of developing an individualized rationale for exercising. One of the studies divided overweight women into two groups. Both received standard advice on diet and exercise, but only one group was encouraged to go deeper and do some emotional work. That group was introduced to many of the same tools you’ll be using throughout this book—the motivational interview, understanding individual barriers, and finding the right type of exercise—all with the aim of developing a very personal incentive for staying physically active. After a year, the group that incorporated the psychological and emotional components lost an average of twelve pound
s of body fat, compared to just three pounds for the other volunteers.

  The women who developed personal motivations averaged 138 more minutes of exercise per week and 2,049 more steps per day (measured by a pedometer) than the other group. Three years later, they were still getting 86 more minutes of physical activity per week than the group that did no emotional work.

  What I find particularly interesting about this research is that it showed that inner motivation is something you can acquire. “Our study shows that people can develop a sense of ownership over their behavior, so their desire to exercise stems from within,” says Pedro J. Teixeira, PhD, one of the study researchers and a professor in the Department of Exercise and Health at Technical University of Lisbon. “Sustaining an appropriate level of physical activity over the long run most often doesn’t come from complying with your doctor’s orders or other external sources but rather from accepting the need for change as your own, integrating exercise into your sense of self. And that can be learned.”

  Professor Teixeira’s words set the stage for what you’re going to do next. What follows is a list of twelve reasons to exercise. Some of them you’ll probably read and think to yourself, Yeah, I should probably try to exercise for that reason. That’s not the tepid reaction I’m going for! I want you to find the reason that inspires you to say, “That is what I care about.” That’s when you’ll know you’re on the right track. And once again, some of these reasons may seem familiar from the previous chapters.

  Ultimately, you should exercise because you derive something positive from it— that’s what’s going to keep you going—so look for something that you feel will improve the quality of your life. Also be open to the idea that physical activity can give you pleasure. Really! You’ll notice the pleasurable part of exercise when you pay attention to how you feel, especially after exercising, and you’ll derive peace of mind from doing something you know is beneficial to your well-being.

  THE WHY LIST: THIRTEEN REASONS TO EXERCISE (PICK AT LEAST ONE)

  1. You’re worried about getting a debilitating and even deadly disease. Let me propose this big one first. Exercise reduces the risk of just about every health problem, from stroke and cancer to diabetes and osteoporosis. The evidence that exercise helps to guard against cardiovascular disease, in particular, is very strong (you have half the risk of developing heart disease if you exercise), and researchers now believe that it offers protection in ways previously not known. When I asked an old classmate of mine who does research in this area, Michael J. Joyner, MD, a professor of anesthesiology at the Mayo Clinic, for an update, he said, “The ways exercise protects your heart go beyond traditional risk factors such as blood pressure and cholesterol. We now also know that it reduces the type of inflammation that triggers heart disease, and dramatically improves the function of the lining of the blood vessels so that blood flows more easily to the heart.”

  Exercise is also a potent weapon in fighting type 2 diabetes, which is becoming epidemic in the United States. According to the National Institutes of Health, a healthy diet and exercise program can reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes by 58 percent. If you have a family history of diabetes, heart disease, or any of the other diseases physical activity helps prevent, you’ve got your reason to exercise right here.

  2. You want to not just lose weight but also avoid regaining it. This is a given, but I wanted to list it as a reason anyway. As I will expand upon in chapter 6, people who maintain their weight loss work out regularly. They don’t just exercise until they take off the pounds, then go back to sitting in a chair sixteen hours a day. If you really, really want to have a thinner, healthier body, there is no way around being physically active.

  3. You want to look better. This doesn’t mean that your motivation for exercising should be that you one day hope to appear in the Victoria’s Secret catalog or on the cover of Men’s Fitness magazine. It’s important to be realistic and take your natural body type into account. That said, there is nothing wrong with wanting to look your best. It’s a perfectly legitimate reason for exercising, as long as you keep in mind the limits of your own body and the limits of exercise to change it. Consider, too, that exercise doesn’t help you look better just by reducing your weight; it also firms the body, improves posture, and gives the skin a glow.

  4. You feel grumpy, constantly annoyed, and sapped of energy. Researchers at the Sacramento Veterans Administration Medical Center looked into this one and found that just one session of exercise—and it doesn’t even have to be vigorous exercise—can put you in a better mood for at least three to four hours. Sometimes the mood boost can last a whole twenty-four hours. People constantly tell me, “I just want to feel better.” If you exercise regularly, you will. I haven’t met anyone who wasn’t eventually more energetic, less easily irritated, and calmer after working physical activity into his or her life.

  5. You’re depressed. It is a well-known fact that exercise helps lower depression, sometimes as effectively as antidepressant medications. Many psychologists even use it as part of the treatment for depression.

  6. You take too many sick days. If you’re looking for a way to reduce colds and upper respiratory infections, a good fitness program is it. Regular exercisers are 50 percent less likely to call in sick.

  7. You have muscle and joint pain. The right kind of exercise (see page 276) can reduce the pain of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis by strengthening the muscles around damaged joints.

  8. You have a bad back. Once upon a time, people with bad backs were urged to avoid physical activity altogether. But that practice went out the window a long time ago. In most cases, the best thing you can do for a bad back is move. Recognize your limits, of course, and work with your doctor and/or physical therapist to get moving again.

  9. You don’t sleep well. Even though exercise is energizing, it also wears you out. It’s a paradox, I know, but take my word for it: Eventually you’ll feel more vibrant during the day and sleep better at night.

  10. You want to slow the effects of aging. Exercise is one of—if not the—most effective ways to fight aging. Loss of muscle and bone, two of the hallmarks of aging, are drastically reduced by exercise, and regular workouts also improve circulation, helping to prevent lines and wrinkles in the skin. Most important, exercise helps reduce inflammation and causes other biochemical changes in the body that help stave off age-related diseases.

  11. You’re concerned about staying mentally sharp. Physical activity seems to have a protective effect against dementia, and helps improve memory and other cognitive functions. One Harvard University researcher has even referred to exercise as “Miracle-Gro for the brain.”

  MORE EXERCISE, LESS INFLAMMATION

  There’s a new buzzword in medical research these days. Perhaps you’ve heard of it: inflammation. Inflammation has been implicated in countless conditions, including heart disease, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. When triggered by some kind of injury or infection, inflammation helps the body heal by promoting more immune activity in the affected area. But chronic, low-grade inflammation actually worsens unhealthful conditions, doing more harm than good.

  Cardiovascular experts now believe that inflammation may play a significant role in heart disease. Certain factors, including smoking, high blood pressure, unfavorable blood lipids, and infections, can cause a release of chemicals that initiate the inflammatory process. That can contribute to the formation of plaque on the artery walls as well as the formation of blood clots. There is also some evidence to suggest that chronic inflammation—which can be a side effect of obesity, among other things—can lead to DNA mutations and, ultimately, the development of cancer.

  One reason that exercise may have so many disease-fighting benefits is because it reduces the levels of proteins called pro-inflammatory cytokines as well as levels of another inflammatory protein, C-reactive protein. Exercise also seems to increase levels o
f an anti-inflammatory form of cytokines. In a roundabout way, it may also help by decreasing body fat and building muscle: Body fat actually produces pro-inflammatory cytokines that cause inflammation. Think about that next time you work out. You’re knocking out inflammation with a one-two punch.

  12. You have asthma. It may seem counterintuitive that the huffing and puffing of exercise can reduce asthma symptoms, but research shows that it’s true. Physically active people with asthma also have fewer emergency room visits.

  13. You care about your kids. When you care about yourself—and exercising is a sign that you do care about yourself—you are doing your kids a favor by setting a good example. Kids emulate their parents’ behavior. If you’re active, there’s a better chance that your kids will be active, too. Plus, you’ll also be doing your kids a favor if you stay healthy (see reason number 1) and are pleasant to live with (see reason number 4).

  FIT DAD = FUN DAD

  Peter Engwall is a well-conditioned and serious athlete. From half marathons and triathlons to 70.3-mile Ironman races, there isn’t much the thirty-eight-year-old can’t—or won’t—do. Weighing in at a toned 190 pounds, the six-foot IT project manager drinks plenty of water, eats lots of fruits and vegetables, and keeps his body in tip-top shape with daily workouts. But Peter wasn’t always the picture of health. In fact, just four years ago, he tipped the scales at 332 pounds and had trouble climbing up a flight of stairs.