Welcome Program - Day 4

With Amber Kay

Exercise – Make It Work FOR You

Yesterday we talked all about your mindset towards nutrition after your surgery. Today we’re focusing on your mindset towards physical activity and movement. Amber is going to share 3 keys in this area that will really help to make physical activity work for you, even if it hasn’t in the past. You’ll be able to use these simple yet powerful keys to really accelerate your results both before and after your surgery. 

Getting started

If exercise is an area that you struggle with, then you’re going to get a lot out of today’s resource. We’ll take you through a simple process that will change the way that you feel about exercise forever. 

You can download the resource here.

Tomorrow’s lesson

We’ll be back tomorrow with our final lesson - how to succeed! 

 

You can read the transcript for this video below:

Welcome Program Day 4 - Transcript

Hi it’s Amber here and I’m back with Day 4 of your welcome program. Firstly I want to congratulate you for being here today. It’s really easy to get caught up with other things in life, especially as you physically and mentally prepare for or recover from your surgery, so it’s a real testament to how seriously you’re taking this as a new life chapter that you’re making time for this video series. It really  shows your commitment to your health and yourself and that you’re really going to do this!

Today I want to talk to you about exercise, or as we at Fresh Start refer to it - physical activity and movement, and I'm going to share 3 keys in this area that will really help to make being active and moving your body work for you, even if it hasn't in the past. You'll be able to use these simple yet powerful keys to really accelerate your health and weight results after your WLS once you’ve been cleared to exercise.

Now, many people who have WLS struggle in the area of physical activity and movement and we generally see two main issues. 

Firstly there are people who don't do enough movement and this is often either because they don't enjoy it or because they struggle to make time for it in their busy lives.  

The other main issue is people who do the wrong kind of movement and who spend a lot of time being active and yet they really don't get the results that they want considering the amount of effort that they put in. This can often be because they are trying to make up for or punish themselves in some way  for food choices they regret, or because their physical activity and movement program is too stressful menatlly and / or physically and is making them hungry afterwards

I'm going to share 3 keys with you that will help to make  physical activity and movement work in a different and better way for you, but before I do that I want you to understand one very, very important underlying principle because most people make this area much harder than it needs to be! 

They think that unless they’re sweating and pushing themselves hard then they’re not going to ‘burn calories’ and  ‘lose weight’. I want to reassure you that this is definitely not the best way to approach physical activity.  Regular movement is incredibly important for a healthy body and a healthy mind, but it’s not about ‘burning calories’ and you can never, ever balance a poor diet with it.

If you want to get your desired results after your surgery, whether it’s a weight, a size, or how you want to feel then you must focus on what you eat, because nutrition gives you most of your results for weight management. There's an old saying that goes, "you lose grams  in the gym but you lose kilograms  in the kitchen". So when it comes to movement, you don’t need to approach it with this ‘no pain, no gain’ mentality.

Physical activity and movement is incredibly important and, depending on what you’re specifically doing, it will definitely help you manage your weight, but the amount of energy that you ‘burn off’ when you are physically active and moving your body is really small compared to the energy contained in food. So please, Let me emphasise again, forget about feeling like you should be doing long and tough workouts, especially if you’re doing it to make up for eating or drinking things you wish you hadn’t and that don’t fit with your healthy lifestyle intentions . 

In fact, long intense workouts can lead to an increased appetite and to people meeting that hunger or rewarding themselves with too much food or foods that are high in sugar, and then undoing all of their hard work.  

It’s much easier to get your nutrition and eating habits right and then use physical activity and movement for its real benefits - as a powerful way of lowering stress levels and putting you in a good mood, so that you reduce food-related habits such as emotional eating, to boost your metabolism, to improve your health and reduce your blood pressure, to tone your body, to increase your stamina and strength, and to correct your posture for a better body shape. 

As a society we don’t move anywhere near enough because of our sedentary lifestyles and the benefits come from simply moving your body more. 

Research shows that simply building up to 30 minutes of walking each day can give you a huge amount of health benefits. The great news is that it also  doesn’t have to be done all in one go and instead it can be split up into blocks throughout the day - for example 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes at lunchtime and 10 minutes in the evening. So stop thinking about ‘burning calories’ and concentrate instead on simply moving more!

Before I talk to you about those 3 keys mentioned earlier I also want to emphasise that physical activity is a form of stress. It can be a good stress or a bad stress depending on how intense the activity is and how much stress your body is under  and you must consult with your medical practitioner before starting any physical activity and movement program.

It's especially important to check in with your medical practitioner before beginning any type of exercise after your surgery.

So here  are 3 key ways to making physical activity work for you, even if it hasn’t in the past:

1. The first key is to make physical activity and movement enjoyable and to stop seeing it as something that has to be painful and miserable, or as a chore or something on your ‘to do list’,  or as a way of making up for poor food and drink choices.

People who are physically active on a regular basis and who sustain it do it because they enjoy it, or at least enjoy it most of the time. If you have a busy life then the only way that you’re going to stick to a particular program for the long-run is if you make your physical activity something that you really want to do and that you’re willing to make fit  into your lifestyle.  There are many ways to move your body but the best program in the world is the one that you will actually do. So if you don't enjoy running or going to the gym then have a think now about what movement you do enjoy, or could enjoy, that's appropriate for you. This may change over time however initially, especially when you’re creating a new kind of relationship with movement, health and your body, making it as positive an experience as possible is going to make for a fantastic positive foundation.

Perhaps it's walking with a friend at lunchtime at work, yoga or pilates.

Let go of thinking about what you believe you ‘should’ be doing and start thinking about what you really want to do. Remember, we all need to move more, so think about being active as simply moving your body in some way, rather than something that has specific rules or looks a certain way. 

2. Become accountable. This second key builds on key number 1 - because even if you enjoy physical activity and movement, squeezing it into a busy life on a regular basis takes commitment and discipline, and one of the best ways to make sure that you stick with your chosen enjoyable activity, especially at the start when you’re creating the habit, is to make yourself accountable, and maybe to do it with a partner or in a group. You're so much more likely to turn up and commit if you've arranged to meet someone because if you don't meet them then you feel like you’re letting them down and this social pressure really works. The social element may also make the experience much more enjoyable for you too.

3. The final key element is to start being active at the level that is appropriate for you, especially if you’re new to whatever movement or activity you’re doing,  and then to use the concept of progressive overload. As I said before, so many people start out way too hard as they think they have to adopt the ‘no pain, no gain’ approach to get any results and if they’re not sweating and exhausted then they’re not losing weight.  If you’re under a lot of stress from health issues, from work, from family life or something else then pushing yourself too hard is actually just adding to your stress levels. It might feel okay in the moment but it’s probably just going to lead to burnout or injury or you’ll dislike it because you find it painful and exhausting. 

If you’re under stress then you’re much better off doing easy enjoyable movement that energises you, lowers your stress levels and puts you in a good mood so that you don’t eat emotionally. Then it’s about using progressive overload. 

When you use progressive overload, you set yourself free of these worries because it means starting out at the right level for you and then consistently challenging yourself with very small and achievable steps. This means that you continue to do just a little bit more and a little bit better gradually over time with your chosen activity. 

So say for example that you walk with a friend for 20 minutes on one week then in a future week, rather than trying to dramatically increase this to a 20-minute jog, you both walk for 25 minutes or you walk for 20 minutes but you do 10 of those minutes, or the whole walk at a slightly faster pace or you do it more often. This will help you to keep your new movement habit going and make it enjoyable rather than painful. You'll also improve your results and minimise your risk of injury. This slow and steady approach will give you much better results in the long run. Think of the old story about the tortoise and the hare! The tortoise always wins in the end!

Once you've recovered from your surgery and you're moving closer to your ideal health and weight then you can then start to add in other forms of physical activity and movement that will really accelerate your body results. 

Activities like resistance or weight training can really improve your body shape and tone and boost your metabolism, when they’re done properly and in the right doses, and in our post-surgery program we’ll talk about the different choices available to you. For now I want you just to start thinking about the types of activities that you’ll enjoy in your new  post-surgical life once you’ve been cleared to exercise, and that you can do now if you’re pre-surgery perhaps. I've included a resource for you, which helps you apply the keys that you've learnt today.

Tomorrow I’ll be back with our final video in this series, and it’s all about how to succeed in whatever way that’s meaningful to you. See you then!