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Industry: Email Alert RSS FeedExercise & Fitness for women over 40
National Women's Health Report, Dec, 2002 by Pamela Peeke
Get over it, say exercise experts. You can gain significant benefits in as little as 30 minutes a day of physical activity, ranging from vigorously cleaning your house to riding your bike to swimming laps. And you don't need to do it all at once; you can break your exercise into smaller increments that together add up to 30 minutes. That's why many exercise experts were alarmed by the recent recommendation from the Institute of Medicine that Americans need 60 minutes of physical activity a day. "That's a recommendation for weight loss, not health," Dr. Marcus says reassuringly. So if you re trying to lose weight, yes, you need to increase the amount of physical activity you get (and decrease the amount you eat). But if you're focused on health, 30 minutes a day of moderate-intensity physical activity should do it.
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Which brings us to the next confusing issue around physical activity: Just what do they mean when they say "moderate intensity?" "Moderate intensity is walking between three to four miles an hour with some urgency, like you're late for an appointment or to catch a bus," says Dr. Marcus. "It's definitely not strolling." You can still talk while doing it, but you're slightly breathless.
But don't get all hung up about time and intensity, says Dr. Marcus. "The most important way for people to be able to stick with physical activity is to be flexible in their approach. Particularly women." That means walking around the block while your child is at piano practice. Doing a light jog or a brisk walk around the soccer field while your kids practice. Using a 15-minute break at work to briskly walk up and down the stairs, or a free half hour at home to weed the garden or rake leaves. The important thing is to plan for the activity.
"We want people to make physical activity a priority so that they write it into their schedules," says Dr. Marcus. "But people also need to be flexible enough to roll with the punches and get away from all-or-nothing thinking," she says.
One thing that may help: Surround yourself with people who also are physically active. A national study conducted by researchers at Stanford University of nearly 3,000 women 40 and older found that if women didn't see other people exercising in the neighborhood, they didn't feel like exercising themselves. In the study of ethnically diverse women, only about nine percent met the definition of being regularly active. Other reasons the women didn't exercise: caregiving duties--whether for children or other adults, lack of energy and, believe it or not, a lack of hills in the neighborhood (the researchers speculate that a hilly neighborhood provides more interesting scenery and is more conducive to walking). The women also said they'd rather exercise on their own than in a group-led exercise class, a response that probably relates to women's needs for flexibility. And some women said they didn't want to exercise because they were self-conscious about their physical appearance. (13) Other research finds even a l ack of sidewalks or unsafe neighborhoods can keep people from exercising.
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