Solutions

How can I reach 10- 20+ hours per week of consistent movement/ exercise?

 

Your environment is critical. Look around where you live. Look around your work. First, identify which one of the below you fit into.

 

An important recommendation is to find something that places you in a state of responsibility. For example when we have a child, we are responsible to raise it. When we own a dog, we are responsible to feed it correctly and take it for walks.

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Growing plants and edible plants also is a great driver of responsibility, and you are also rewarded with healthy grown garden food. Go on - get moving.

 

A) If you are sedentary in an office, your health-span options may include:

1. a walking treadmill desk

2. Sit on a quality Swiss ball

3. Stand up desk

4. Desk bike

 

Remember, movement is best, and please read our section about what happens to the body when sedentary throughout the day.

 

A. Are you an office worker sitting all day?

Sitting on an ergonomic static chair is terrible for our health. It is arguably worse than smoking. This is criminal but this habit has been accepted and considered ‘normal’ for way too long.

We now have to change, and we are calling on every person to acknowledge that it is abnormal and unhealthy to sit on a static chair all day every day for work.

We are seeking CEO's and Managers to make the change.

You will need to find time outside of your work hours to reach your 10 -20 hours Health-span target.

 

B) If you are sedentary in a taxi, bus driver, delivery driver etc…you will need to find time outside of your working hours to reach your Health=span target of 10 -20 hours.

 

C) If you are a delivery driver but also active on the job by frequently getting in an out delivering packages, drinks etc – you will be gaining valuable steps, and in many cases you may be getting enough lifting and trolley work during the day which is great for your muscles and bone density. Please add up your hours of movement, then add on anything necessary to reach your Health-span target of 10 -20 hours.

 

D) If you are an active tradesman ( ie plumber, carpenter, lawnmower, gardener/ horticulturist etc) then you have a premier job that ticks off all the exercise required. The only additional recommendation is to do a small amount of ‘specific’ exercise like core fitness or balance training or activate fast twitch muscles by playing a game of recreation sport like ie, indoor cricket or tennis.

 

E) If you are retired, you have no excuses whatsoever to move 10 –20 hours per week. Gardening and walking are excellent as well as some balance exercises to prevent falls. There are many options – croquet, lawn bowls, gym exercises, swiss ball exercises, bicycle etc. Find what you enjoy doing.

Retirement can be a dirty word. It is important to keep moving with purpose for new chapters in life.

 

F) If you engage (only) in 'structured' exercise 3 -5 times per week as well as working in a seated office, this is absolutely great and you are reducing your risk of all cause mortality. However, be mindful that the best available research suggests that those people who are simply consistent with movement of 10 -20 hours per week ( during their lifetime) will ultimately achieve greater health-span results than those who train a few times a week( even vigorous exercise) - then sit like most sedentary people the rest of the week.

 

Your environment is critical.

Look around where you live. Look around your work.

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To help you do you have:

• cycle paths

• ocean

• walking paths

• Public swimming pool

• Sports clubs( rowing club, lawn bowls, tennis, croquet etc)

• Oval

• Recreation centre for indoor sports, ie Basketball, netball , cricket etc.

• Health/ fitness club

• Walking groups

• Space to grow plants or vegetables/ fruit?

• Community garden?

• Farmers market

• River

• Circus school

• Gymnastics club

• Volunteering work that involves movement/ lifting

• Working which involves constant movement and even some lifting ( farm work, gardening, waitress/ waiter, delivery drivers, carpet layer etc.

 

The worst occupations to promote sedentary lifestyles and extremely poor chance of Health-span are:

ALL seated office related positions where you are planted like a tree for much of the day.

These also include taxi drivers, bus drivers etc. Anything where you are sitting much of the day.

 

Below is an example of a common office worker and how he can reach higher levels of movement each week.

 

Example A:

Michael is 40, a little overweight, and lives in South Perth and works in the city. His job is sedentary at the desk. His current level of movement is a small amount of incidental movement( ie walking from the car to his office, walking to a lunch bar to get lunch every day at work etc) and he walks his dog every day for 30 min.

For Michael to now reach a minimum of 10 hours of ‘movement/ exercise, he needs to think about new strategies to implement into his lifestyle. He wants more energy and a longer quality ‘Healthspan’ without relying on the medical system.

He decides that he will bike ride now into the city for work. He is considering an e-bike to begin with to help him initially while he builds his fitness.

( The City of Perth is encouraging bicycle riding and has implemented a cycling and funding program).

It will take Michael about 15 minutes at around 25km per hour speed. Both ways will be 30 minutes x 5 days per week is 2.5 hours of cycling to and from work. When it looks like raining he will take the bus instead.

During the day at lunchtime he has also committed to do a 30 exercise session in the gym. He has said to his boss he will stay and extra 30 minutes to make up for the extra 30 minutes he needs for the gym. This then adds an extra 2.5 hours of movement/ exercise to his week.

After work he walks his dog for about 30 minutes without sitting down and weekends sometimes a little more with extra play time. This gives an extra 4 hours per week of movement/ exercise.

On the weekend he is planning to join a lawn bowls club to have a game of bowls which will last around 3 hours.

This now takes Michaels movement/ exercise to 12 hours for the week which places him in the positive zone health-span.

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Before starting on any journey to improve wellness:

1. Ensure that you have trained yourself in 'self love' and that you have sufficient respect of who you are as a human being. Understand the basics of care and responsibility to look after yourself.

2. Understand the lifelong commitment to not only keeping your home clean, but also your personal health for the rest of your life.

3. Understand the critical importance of exercise by learning from our education section.

4. Learn about the 7 dimensions of wellness and aim to be balanced with your health.

5. Be patient. The pursuit of Health-span is a journey: it's not a quick diet or 8 week boot camp exercise program. It is the rest of your life. Health-span is to maintain full function until nearly as possible to the end of life.

Lost self love

People who don’t move enough and or eat healthy enough do not love themselves enough. They are not connected sufficiently with their bodies. One needs to respect the marvellous human body creation because it is the most important item you will ever own in your life. It is more valuable than your house or anything you will ever own, no matter how much money you have. Because when illness strikes, all of a sudden your life's material or real estate value comes crashing down to zero, and all the new energy goes into your personal health. We see this with cancer patients over and over and over again. 

 

When you love yourself enough, you care enough about looking after your body. You need 2 things - TIME and MONEY.

Time is the most important thing to give yourself for personal health. Money is also required, but getting fit and healthy has absolutely nothing to do with someone's financial position. You don't need much money to be fit and you don't  that much money to be healthy. If people can afford to buy processed foods, they can easily afford inexpensive healthy whole foods like corn, beans, potatoes, rice, carrots etc etc.

When people own dogs, they care enough about feeding the dog correctly, providing water and exercise. On the contrary a dog owner does not have someone feeding them healthy meals and taking them on a walk every day- this must be an intrinsic habit.

If this role was reversed with a dog owning at least one human, we would have very little obesity and lifestyle related diseases.

Now funnily enough we virtually reverse this role at our health retreat - Natures Paradise Health Retreat and Spa: our guests come out looking for their food at breakfast lunch and dinner, and we serve very high nutritional healthy meals. And we give them water during day, PLUS we take them on walks( without a lead). And guess what - it works all of the time- people feel healthier, fitter and lose weight...the right way.

Self love is key. We need to find it within ourselves to look after ourselves.

 

Set boundaries

People who give too much and like to please people don’t set enough boundaries. These are people who say “I am time poor.”

Creating boundaries frees up some time for ‘you’ because balance is essential in life.

 

Conscousness

Having a good state of consciousness is being aware of your environment, being in the present and being aware that being a healthy functional human requires personal maintenance.

 

First you must control the internal before you control the external.

 

nternal Neuro-psychology.

Self love

Set boundaries

Consciousness

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