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News : Staying the course - Motivation is key to achieving fitness goals
Indianapolis Star - United States, August 12 2005 -- Steve Whitlow doesn't have the energy to play basketball with his 16-year-old son or tennis with his buddies like he used to.
And when a friend told him that his father had his first heart attack at age 36, Whitlow knew he had to get moving.
"I just turned 37," said Whitlow, a Lebanon father who also has a 14-year-old daughter. "I don't want that to be me. I want to live to see my kids have grandkids."
So on Aug. 1, he went through an hourlong fitness evaluation at the National Institute for Fitness and Sport in Indianapolis to set up a regular workout program.
After twice abandoning his exercising, he's committed to getting back into shape and losing weight. "Working out is no longer optional to me. I'm going to integrate it in my life. And it's going to be something permanent."
With packed work schedules, children and the lure of movies and TV stations at your fingertips, sticking to an exercise routine is tough for many. Often, they try to do too much too fast. When results don't come quickly, they get frustrated. Exercising becomes more drudgery than fun. They quit within weeks or months.
They're the ubiquitous "stop-starters."
A large number of surveys and studies consistently show that more than 50 percent of people who begin exercising abandon the program within three to six months, said Cedric Bryant, chief exercise physiologist with the American Council on Exercise, a nonprofit organization in San Diego that certifies and trains health and fitness professionals.
The U.S. Centers on Disease and Prevention also reports that two-thirds of Americans aren't physically active on a regular basis and a quarter get practically no exercise at all.
Despite much attention to growing obesity rates nationwide and health benefits of exercise, those numbers haven't budged much in more than two decades, said Bryant.
"We don't have to convince people that it's good for them, but that it's something worth investing their time," he said.
Work hard, play hard
Whitlow knows exercising is good for him. But now he realizes he needs to be in good shape to have the energy to play hard and work hard.
When he got out of the Army 10 years ago, he was in great shape. But then he didn't exercise for a year. His weight ballooned to 250 pounds on his 5-foot, 8-inch frame. So he joined a health club, lost more than 50 pounds, ran six miles during his lunch break for nearly five years, and lifted weights. He ran the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon eight times.
In the past year, he lapsed again. His weight went up to 225.
Job promotions and family responsibilities kept him busy. He's a senior project manager for VanAusdell and Farrar Inc. in Downtown Indianapolis.
He now plans to exercise via cross-training: Walking, using the stationary bike and treadmill and lifting weights. He and his wife are going to bike at night, too.
"Instead of sitting in my La-Z-Boy, watching the news and drinking a beer, I'm going downstairs, watch the news, ride the bike and drink water," he said.
But his focus isn't as much on his weight as it is on his long-term health and changing his whole lifestyle. That includes eating better and skipping his favorite food: ice cream.
Molding your lifestyle
That's the focus fitness experts say holds the most promise for getting people to remain active, rather than concentrating on losing pounds or bulking up.
People who can't work out 30 minutes or more at one time can break up their activity into 10- or 15-minute periods and get the same health benefits, said Michelle Miller, fitness specialist coordinator for Indiana University's Department of Kinesiology in Bloomington.
Creating an active lifestyle -- taking the stairs, walking more, doing physical chores -- every day is important, she said. "That's the key. And motivation is a huge issue."
One way people can push themselves is to pick an activity they can't do, do it until they can and then pick other ones.
"People tend to stick with exercise if they have a strong sense of purpose and they feel it makes a difference," said Carol Kennedy, a lecturer in IU's Department of Kinesiology. "Maybe it's 'I can't play with my grandchildren,' or 'I can't bike like I used to.' "
Carol Farr really needed some motivation. The 63-year-old hospice chaplain who works part-time for Heartland Hospice had gotten lackadaisical about walking and did just a few floor exercises.
She knew that wasn't enough.
In the back of her mind, she often recalled watching her mother, sedentary and overweight, die of cancer at age 58. But Farr's memories of her dreaded high school gym classes -- and all the trim girls -- surfaced when she thought of cranking up an exercise regimen.
For Farr, her "carrot" was a hiking vacation in Arizona. Her husband, Kent, suggested it.
"I really got motivated," she said after a workout at the YMCA near her Northeastside home.
Now, three days a week she heads to the Benjamin Harrison YMCA at 5 a.m. to plow through a nearly two-hour exercise regimen.
The ordained minister, who is 5-foot-4 and weighs 119, hits the treadmill, stationary bike or elliptical trainer. Then she uses 12 weight machines until she finishes a workout created for her under YMCA's Coach Approach program. Last fall, she started with a personal trainer there and then began the program.
Coach Approach, created three years ago in Atlanta, is now in 14 YMCA locations across the country including Indianapolis. It seeks to keep exercise novices from dropping out, but it can help anyone. They're provided a scientifically based regimen that matches the difficulty of workouts with their tolerance, health and fitness level.
YMCA wellness coach Chuck Whiting at the Benjamin Harrison branch says the program is the best thing he's seen to keep people from quitting.
"It provides a specified plan tailored to each person, plus they get all kinds of feedback from the machines and some from staff, too," he said.
Goals are created and tweaked for diet and fluid intake, as well as for weight lifted, repetitions and time spent on equipment. After plugging in an ID number, exercisers see their goals on monitors on all the equipment, linked to a computerized monitoring system.
National YMCA officials say the 30 percent dropout rate within six months is nearly half that of traditional programs.
In Indianapolis' six YMCAs, which started the program in 2003, half who started that year stayed with it for six months. That's nearly 30 percentage points more than the continuation rate of those using the computerized fitness system in 2002 before the program started.
After several months, Farr is hooked on exercising.
She credits her improved fitness for being able to recover more quickly from bowel surgery and complications in March. She now can go on moderate hikes. She's doing more flower gardening. And carrying the laundry upstairs without puffing isn't a problem now for Farr, who has asthma, arthritis and osteoporosis.
"Oh, yes, I think very much I will continue. It has really become meaningful to see I am developing muscle where I haven't before, too," she said. "Even when it's tough, I don't think I can ever quit again."
(source : www.indystar.com)
