Welcome back to the Bite Me nutrition podcast. I'm going to be talking to you about exercise today, which might make you
panic because you're thinking, is Jono finally going to talk outside his scope? Actually, that's a bit prideful, isn't it? I'm sure I've spoken outside my scope before, but talking specifically about exercise would be very obviously outside my scope. However, don't stress, I'm not going to be doing that. We're going to be talking about some strategies that you can implement in your week to help you exercise more. And look, I do have a Bachelor of Exercise and Nutrition science as well, so I feel like I'm vaguely allowed to talk about exercise. But what I'm specifically going to be focusing on is strategies and habits that you can use to help you improve your relationship with exercise and the frequency of your exercise. Now, of course, if you're already doing plenty of exercise, why are you listening to a podcast called How To Exercise More? But if you are struggling to get exercising for the first time, or if you have maybe used to be doing it really frequently and now you've kind of hit a bit of a lull, that's really what we're going to be talking about today. Look, I'm going to say exercise. You can substitute exercise for train or move. I use different language based on where clients are at. To be perfectly honest, for some people, focusing on moving more is the best way to approach it. I know personally, I use training because I like to think that if I call it training rather than exercising, to me it seems a little bit more important and a bit more structured, and I want to continue with my training program, but whatever word works for you, you go ahead and use that. I believe in you. So, by far, the best thing you can possibly do. One thing that is very positive and helpful with improving your exercise frequency is booking it into your calendar. I cannot stress this enough, right? Do not say I'm going to exercise twice this week. I'm going to do three runs this week. I'm going to go to the gym four times this week because that's too vague, right? There's way too many loopholes there. Three times this week. I don't need to worry about that till at least Thursday, right? I can go Thursday, Friday, Saturday. However, if I have booked those three times into my calendar, it's a lot harder for me to wiggle out of. And also, you get a bit of troubleshooting up front, right? Because when I'm looking at my calendar, I can see that, oh, Tuesday afternoon, I'm actually a little bit quiet. Cool. I'm going to go for a walk then. And then Thursday, friday are really, really busy, so maybe I've actually got to get up early on Thursday to get that in. Or maybe Thursday. Friday is a waste of time, me trying to exercise them I'll focus on Saturday so you can be more specific and a bit smarter with when you're trying to book it in. And so you can book it in at a time where it's far more likely to actually happen. Right. There is a study which I'm going to try and find after this, but they kind of compared two groups, and one group said they're going to go to the gym three times a week, and the other group said they're going to go Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 04:00 p.m. And they even visualized how they were going to get there. And that group went 70 70% more than the group that just said three times for the week. So please be specific. Book it into your calendar. It's so important, right. Then once you've booked it into your calendar, the next thing you want to do is around those times, you want to set up your environment. And by that I mean you want to lay your exercise clothes out, you want to put your shoes out, you want to take your exercise gear to work. So rather than coming home and getting changed into your exercise gear, you're getting changed from your exercise gear and then coming home because then you've arrived home and you're already ready. Right? We want to try and think of clever little ways that we can engineer our environment, whether that be at home or at work to help us, to support us. The best ones I have found is laying clothes out and taking clothes. But I'm sure you're going to have some clever little examples that you can use in your own life as well. The other really important thing is to make sure that you're doing something you enjoy, right? Unless you have specific sport or athletic goals, really the key here is just getting moving. It doesn't really matter what it is. So trying to force yourself to do some form of exercise, specific form of exercise, because you heard someone say that it's the best thing for whatever is not really the best way to get started at the very least, right? Yeah. Maybe you want to build towards doing some resistance training because you have heard it's really good for bone density and movement and things because it is. But maybe the thought of going to the gym makes you want to claw your eyes out, whereas going for a walk out in nature sounds really exciting. Start there. That's going to build your capacity, it's going to build your foundation and maybe that transitions to a different form of activity down the line. Rather than trying to jump straight to going to the gym when at the moment that's the last thing you feel like doing, that's not going to end well. Okay? So make sure that when you're trying to build a habit, you're starting by building that habit, by doing something you enjoy, right? The other really critical thing to focus on is making sure that you're starting small, right? That goes for both frequency and intensity. So don't go from zero movement sessions a week to four movement sessions a week. That's a huge jump. Add one a week, nail one or two maybe sessions a week for three weeks. You want to set a goal that's so unbelievably easy in your mind that you couldn't possibly not achieve it. And then you then go ahead and achieve it because what that does is it racks up a win for you mentally, you succeeded. So you're far more likely to continue with that routine and that behavior. Maybe you then add a third session after a couple of weeks or a fourth session and so on and so forth. That's perfectly fine. But when you're at the beginning of that stage, start with a very low frequency and also start with a very low intensity. Another thing that I find people, so intensity essentially just means how hard and how long. And so if you're trying to go for a walk, for example, don't say to yourself, okay, I'm just going to go for this hour walk because that's a big task, that's a bit of a mountain, right, that you're kind of looking forward to, not looking forward to necessary, but that you're preparing for. If your task is to put your shoes on and get out the door, that's way more doable. Maybe you just get to the end of the road and then you come home. But maybe when you get to the end of the road, instead you go, well, I'll just turn this corner, I'll get the end of that road, and we get the end of that road. And before you know it, you go on for a 20 minutes walk in a 20 minutes walk that happens consistently is way better than a 60 minutes walk that ever happens. Okay, start small. Frequency and intensity. The other thing that I would recommend as well, so I talk about doing something you enjoy, but also try and do it with people you like, okay, if you're a female person, so I hate exercising other people, so I wouldn't do this. But if you do like people, then exercising with a friend or exercising with group, whether that be a class or team sport, martial arts, dance class dance, all of those things can be really helpful ways to increase your frequency and increase your enjoyment. So really make sure that you're leaning on other people to help. There's a bit of accountability, but there's also just misery. Less company, as we say it's, far more enjoyable things together. So listen to that. Another thing that I like, language that they use around the exercising or training even. I'll say in the last thing, oh yeah, I've got a train later, I'm going to try and train later, or I should train later, I think I'm going to, or anything like that. I will just say I've got a train later. That helps her know that that's unserious. It also helps me know. But there's no kind of flexibility there's. No. Because if I go in mindset, I'm pretty sure I know it's going to. Now, look, when I get to that exercise session, if I'm really not feeling it, maybe I don't go to the gym. Maybe I go for a bike ride. Or maybe I just play with the kids and I can chase them. I'm still setting aside, that's fine and I'm still absolutely going to use the language. At least I'm going to do something and good segue into talking to your partner about your desired exercise because that's going to be relevant to them. If you have a partner, whether you've got kids or you don't have kids, either way you say hey, I'm going to be off doing something at this time it lets them know they can help you plan for it, they can prepare for it. Medicate training. So if you sit down and say, hey, it's really important that I need to find two times in my week where I can reduce, can you please help me, please help me find when you can take care of the kids so I can go for a walk and then when I can return an IP. But it's really important that you have that conversation with a partner because if they don't know yeah, it was going to be 6 hours. But as a guy sometimes we need to be told things a little bit more roughly because we're not going to figure it out for ourselves. So don't wait your partner to figure it out themselves. Tell them, hey, can we figure this out please? I think that was everything. Strategies and ideas is a way that you can ultimately amount of exercise. Like I said, like I said, pick one of these teams. Focus on that initially. If you're going to focus on any of them, I wouldn't focus on the booking, but don't try and do all of them great work. And hopefully you can get exercising, because, to be honest, most of us exercise or train. We can increase our requency so that we can see benefit. he list of benefits ncredibly long. Not just does, not only does it increase your lifespan,no point living lost under the last 40 years. So of course there are scenarios. So let's try and get so much incredible, shall we? Shall we? Till next time. I will see you.