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Have you seen this in the news this week?

"Women need an hour of exercise daily to maintain weight in midlife.

An hour. As in, 60 minutes.  Have you seen a woman lately with an extra hour in her day?
Me either. Nonetheless, that's the recommendation released online Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

We wanted to see in regular folks -- people not on any particular diet -- what level of physical activity do you need to prevent weight gain over time," said the lead author of the study, Dr. I-Min Lee, an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard University. "It's a large amount of activity. If you're not willing to do a high amount of activity, you need to curtail your calories a lot," Lee told the Los Angeles Times."

How do you feel about that?  I worry about studies like this.  Actually I worry about our response to them.  How many of you have the initial reaction that this is impossible, you are already overwhelmed, so you might as well give up now.

 

The other problem is the reporting of the study.  The news gets hold of the study and gives you a small part of it, not the whole.  For example, if you read the report, they count equal an hour of walking with a half hour of running.  Did that then just cut the recommendation in half?  What if you can power walk and get to the same heart rate as when you run?  Or walk on hills?  Is 30 minutes enough then?  The report also talks about breaking up the 60 minutes into small, intense workouts being equivalent but the news did not report that.

 

In a way, the study is common sense.  I am sure that before McDonalds was on every corner, we drove everywhere, and sat at desks all day, it was the norm for a woman to have at least an hour of intense physical activity every day.  I would think in many cultures women spend their days very active by growing and preparing food, walking to the market and back, and venturing out for clean water.  But we don't.

 

So what can you do if this is too much right now?  The study is basically saying make sure you get a lot of exercise or you will need to cut your caloric intake year after year.  Um, I'm 45 and I already know this from experience.  Didn't need the study to tell me that it gets more challenging.  Right, ladies?

 

Don't let these studies get you down.  This one reminds me a little bit of the Time Magazine cover story about how exercise doesn't make you thin.  Who is writing these...men?  Thin men?  Whoever is doing the writing, they are not writing with our hearts in mind.  They forget that we don't operate logically when it comes to these matters.

 

I suggest you ignore all this, even though it was in the news day after day last week.  Let it go in one ear and out the other.  Stay on YOUR path.  Keep taking your small, do-able steps.  Keep working in the right direction.  This is a very personal journey and a difficult one if you have failed many times before.  Don't let information like this discourage you.

 

If it doesn't help you, move on.  Find the stuff that helps you.  Do you get inspired by watching The Biggest Loser?  Then watch it!  Are you just getting started exercising?  Keep going!  Are you struggling with your weight?  Don't give up!  Information is fine if it's helpful, but what really matters is that you keep believing.

 

Now get moving!

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