Session 2 Exercise!

This session will talk about:

• How we went with our goals from last session

• Reviewing our monitoring logs

• Exercise: the benefits, effective exercise, and ways to get more activity in our lives

• Willingness: what is it?

Strive for progress, not perfection.    – Anon

Review

Thinking over how you’ve gone with putting in changes is an important process. Think about what you tried, what went well, and what could be improved for next time. This is something you will find yourself doing continually over time.

Why is exercise important?

Exercise and being physically active is another important part of a healthy lifestyle. 

• Being active means you are using more energy, which helps you with managing your weight. 

• Exercise and physical activity is a mood-booster: it helps us feel better, and protects or improves things like depression, anxiety and other psychological disorders.

• The more active we are, the more we start to increase our energy reserves. Using energy actually gives us more energy!

• Our sleep is affected by our activity levels: being active generally means our sleep gets better as we tire ourselves out during the day.

• When we get good sleep and good energy levels, our appetites are better regulated. 

How much exercise do we need?

Moderate intensity means your heart and breathing rate has gone up, but you can still speak a full sentence.

What is ‘moderate intensity’ exercise?

Different types of exercise…

Incidental physical activity also counts! This is extra activity you can build into your everyday routines, such as:

• Housework

• Taking the stairs rather than the escalator or lift

• Walking to work (or even part of the way), or to school

• Parking further away at the shops to add in an extra few minutes

Solving exercise barriers

List out some of the reasons which make it difficult to fit in exercise and activity: write them down in the box on the left

Then, write down ways to get around these barriers in the box on the right. Here are some ideas to help get you started! 

• Exercise doesn’t mean you have to go to the gym or play sports: everyday activities like walking to the shops can count. What could you fit in your day?

• Start with something manageable and make it your routine. You can increase the amount of time spent later.

• You can split up your exercise – 10 minutes here and 15 minutes there will add up.

• The best activities are ones you find fun and you’ll keep doing.

• Involve your family and friends. Make it a social event.

Managing Pain

This is the pain cycle. This can keep us stuck in inactivity habits, worsen our pain and keep us from our goals. 

Pacing our activities means slow and steady progress to prevent injury and burnout. The key elements to pacing are:

• Performing exercise in a non-painful range

• Lower the impact

• Slower speed

• Shorter bouts

• Progress slowly

Have a ‘flare up’ plan to manage when pain gets worse

Goal Setting

What’s your physical activity goal? 

What can you start doing this week? 

What’s your next nutrition goal? 

Look back at the nutrition non-negotiables and pick the next one you will achieve this week.

You will find some extra food monitoring forms in the appendix at the back of this workbook. If you find these helpful, feel free to photocopy more for your use. Otherwise, other tracking apps or your own diary are nice ways to continue monitoring what you eat.

You can use this log to keep track of your exercise and physical activity. 

Summary

By next week...

By next week, you will have…

• Worked on your next nutrition goal 

• Worked on your physical activity goal 

• Continued with monitoring your food, and started monitoring your physical activity levels

• Continued working on your social goal