The Excellence of Exercise
Sadly, we are a nation of couch potatoes
Every day, we modern humans stay comfortably seated on our behinds for hours at a time: Face Timing on smartphones, binge-watching shows on Netflix, pecking away on computer keyboards, scrolling through social media feeds, and other nefarious sedentary activities.
When it comes to poor health in today’s modern world, ‘sitting’ has become the new smoking. Like smoking, sedentary behavior can lead to death from cardiovascular issues and cancer and cause chronic conditions such as Type 2 diabetes. Prolonged sitting, meaning sitting for 8–12 (or more) hours per day, increases your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 90%.
Unfortunately, the message to get out and exercise has increasingly fallen on deaf ears as Americans grow more inactive and gain weight. Over 80% of American adults don’t get enough exercise. People spend more time on their butts and backsides than they did a decade ago. Sadly, it seems that just standing has become the new form of exercise in today’s world.
Guidelines for Physical Activity
The 2022 Federal Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans continue an approachable tack of urging adults to simply “move more and sit less throughout the day.” And reminding you that “some physical activity is better than none.” The updated recommendations also specify that physical activity can be accumulated throughout the day. Even short activities like taking the stairs or picking a far-away parking spot are deemed beneficial.
The Guidelines say that for substantial health benefits, adults should do at least 150 minutes to 300 minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity (such as brisk walking) — or 75 minutes to 150 minutes a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity (such as running) — or some combination of the two. In addition, the Guidelines say adults should aim to complete muscle-strengthening activities — such as resistance training or weightlifting — at least two days per week.
These key guidelines also apply to older adults but with these additional provisos:
- As part of their weekly physical activity, older adults should do multicomponent physical activity that includes balance training as well as aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities.
- Older adults should determine their level of effort for physical activity relative to their fitness level.
- Older adults with chronic conditions should understand whether and how their conditions affect their ability to do regular physical activity safely.
- When older adults cannot do 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity a week because of chronic conditions, they should be as physically active as their abilities and conditions allow.
These are all excellent recommendations. But in my view, they are the minimum. Nature’s rule is simple: Do something every day that sends ‘growth’ signals throughout your body to override the ‘decay’ signals. So, subject to approval from your doctor, I say you should ignore all talk out there about exercising only three or four days a week. Like our national cholesterol guidelines, it’s a bare minimum. It’s a desperate plea from the medical profession to a nation of couch potatoes.
Growth and Decay
In a previous article about the human aging process, I talked about the body’s life-long battle between growth and decay. Let me now elaborate on how exercise fits in.
The physical messages you send by being consciously and steadily active — and the emotional messages you send by being engaged in the great hunt of life — can override the constant default message of decay. The net result is that while you are actively destroying large parts of your body all the time, you are growing more than you throw out. That’s where exercise comes in.
The remarkable aspect of the evolutionary design of your brain and body is that if enough growth signals are sent throughout your physical form, they will overwhelm the signals to decay. As a result, your body will activate the machinery to build up the muscles, heart, capillaries, tendons, bones, joints, coordination, and so on.
The whole point of exercise
So, what’s the point of exercise? Well, for starters, you lose muscle mass as you age. And exercise can help you rebuild it. And since muscles burn more calories than fat — even at rest — exercise to rebuild muscles will help offset your slowing metabolism as you age. In addition, exercise helps stop, delay, and sometimes improve serious illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, and osteoporosis.
The point of exercise is not to just “burn off” calories. More importantly, it’s to help your brain stay sharp and tell every part of your body to grow — to invest in building new body tissue and run at a higher metabolic rate all day and all night long.
Exercise — a trick on nature
Exercise is the friendly trick you play on your natural form. What I mean is that your body — that evolved over hundreds of thousands of years hunting and gathering in nature — expects you to walk ten miles a day with an hour or two of hunting and some sprinting and heavy labor thrown in. You can convince your body that spring has come to the savannah with just under an hour a day of exercise. We’re talking an hour a day of assertive activity in order to be lean, fit, alert, energetic, healthy, and optimistic for decades to come.
With exercise, it’s important to remember that nature is not a treadmill or elliptical machine at the gym. Nature is an ever-changing physical environment. So, it should be no surprise that various types of exercises and intensities do better than a single, unvarying routine.
The master signaler
Exercise is the master signaler for the body to grow. It’s the agent that sets hundreds of chemical processes in motion each time you head out for that morning run and start to sweat. It’s the foundation of positive brain functioning. It’s what sets off the cycles of strengthening and repair within the muscles and joints. And it leads directly to a more robust life with an improved immune system, better sleep, weight loss, insulin regulation, fat burning, and enhanced sexuality — not to mention dramatic resistance to heart attack, stroke, hypertension, Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, diabetes, high cholesterol, and depression. All that from exercise.
So really, how much exercise?
Again, subject to approval from your doctor, you should exercise six days a week for the rest of your life. Sorry, but that’s it. No negotiations. No excuses. Six days of some tangible form of exercise until you die. If you’re still in your forties — and stretched to the breaking point with work, kids and travel — you might think about four or five days. But six is much better even then. And after age fifty, six days a week is mandatory with your doctor’s approval.
Don’t think of it as exercise. Think of it as sending a constant “grow” message to override that crazy “decay” message! Think of it as telling your body to get stronger, more limber, and functionally younger in the only language your body understands. Do it because it’s the only thing that works. Nothing you are doing in the last third of your life is as important as daily exercise.
With such a health-minded commitment, you can congratulate yourself every night before you go to sleep that you chose a little bit of growth today instead of decay. And you get to choose all over again tomorrow.
Remember: Most of what we call aging is decay — and decay is optional. It’s under your control.
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This article is compiled from chapter 5 of my first book in the series titled: “So, here’s some of what I know so far regarding Brain, Body, Budget, Being.”
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