Lace Up Your Sneakers and Move

Welcome to Step 2 of our 10 Steps to Heart Health series. Okay, this is my favorite topic. I am so excited to tell you everything there is to know about exercise, (Don’t cringe -Please don’t cringe.) Just please hear me out. Exercise is not intuitive. What I mean by that is when I say to someone, go exercise, they’re likely thinking of going to the gym or they’re thinking of being exhausted, short of breath, smelly and sweaty, and they just don’t want to do it. 

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It’s a lot. It’s exhausting, but that’s not how it has to be. See, the way that people think of exercise is as a chore, it’s a thing, it’s a problem. “I got to fit it in my life.” “I don’t have time for this.” But, let me tell you the other side of exercise. When you exercise it is the most magical thing on the planet.

Exercise is the Best Medication

Exercise decreases your blood pressure, decreases your cholesterol, steadies and lowers your sugars and decreases weight. Exercise also makes you feel fabulous. And I don’t mean fabulous in the way that it’s like, “Oh, I’m getting skinny.” I don’t mean that. I mean fabulous by the way it releases serotonin, which is the feel good, fabulous hormone in your brain. You know what happens when serotonin is released – you get happier. 

So I have a challenge for you before you decide you do not want to do this because it’s exhausting and challenging and you don’t have time. Think about it this way, if you could figure out a way every day or at least five days a week that you can get a rush of happy hormones in your body, and by the way, feel good, look better, lower your blood pressure, cholesterol, and sugars, and feel fabulous about yourself, would you fit that into your schedule? I think so. 

Buy A Pair of Sneakers

I had this patient come in one day and I said to her (like I do with everyone else), of course you have to exercise. And she looked at me and said, “Hmm, I don’t own sneakers.” I took my prescription pad, wrote her name and the date on it, and then I wrote, buy a pair of sneakers. I signed my name and handed it to her and said “There you go. There’s your prescription.”

She said it made her feel better and less guilty when she went to buy the sneakers and it actually got her on the way. The American Heart Association recommends 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity exercise. 

Okay, but what does that mean? Five days a week, 30 minutes. That’s it. What does moderate intensity exercise mean? This is what it means. You don’t have to be sweaty, exhausted, or miserable. 

Moderate intensity is when you get your heart rate up to this level that when you’re doing some activity, it’s not that you can’t speak, it’s not like you can’t get the words out. It’s that it’s a little hard to talk. But our sweet spot might be about that 75% for moderate intensity exercise. Now, if you calculate that out and you actually get a little device to help you look at your heart rate, you will know your heart rate zone for 30 minutes, five days a week, and that’s it. 

The other thing I want to mention is this strength training thing. The weights. I know people think they have to go to the gym and pick up really heavy stuff that ‘s going to be hard and almost kill them. No, that’s not it. You get light weights. So you can do 15 repetitions, 15 times, and you do two sets of those. You don’t have to do such hard weights that you can only lift it twice, 15 repetitions, two times for your big muscle groups. And what are those? The legs, your butt, your arms, your back, your abs. 

Let’s Get Moving 

I believe exercise needs to become part of our lives. A habit, a ritual, a thing that we do. All of us schedule everything all day long. You must schedule exercise. You don’t put it at the bottom of the list. You don’t say, I don’t have time. You make the time. You always have to make the time. You are worth it. 

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