Two months ago I started working out i.e going to gym. Hey wait a second! I am not 100 kilos I am just half of that. Now you may ponder as to why I need Gymming, well because I am 50 kilos and my stomach is popping out. I am still 50 kilos now, after joining the Gym. That very moment I had this epiphany. Mankind seems to have a difficult time on keeping up with their own fitness or exercise routines.
Staggering Statistic
In spite of the familiar knowledge of the benefits of keeping fit and healthy. Exercise has been fastened to reduce depressive symptoms and risk for heart disease. Yet the inclination towards the couch and TV instead of going for a short jog is just too great. At first I thought I am alone. As stated by the surgeon general, more than 60% adults don’t exercise regularly and 25% aren’t active at all. The Center for Disease Control says that 34% are overweight and more than 72 million people were obese from 2005 to 2006.
The Influencers
Psychologists around the world, for decades, have studied why people love to exercise and why they don’t. Preferring to be inactive is not necessarily an instinctive human trait. As a matter of fact, most children are quite active, and people generally stay active all the way through high school. But many of them stop being active once they reach college. Psychologist, Steven Bray, McMaster University, observed this tendency and decided to look at what stopped students from continuing physical activity during the alteration to college. And why shall just the colleges be blamed. This is also applied to many of life’s transitions like moving into the workforce, switching jobs or moving, getting married, having kids. Unfortunately, exercise is one of the first activity that gets sacrificed when we get busy with other labor.
Mind Over Body
According to a research, variety of volunteers were recruited as cleaning staff and were told that they were going to do specific task which was enough to meet surgeon generals daily requirement. They were told that changing linen for 15 minutes would burn approximately 40 calories and vacuuming for 15 minutes burns would burn about 50 calories. The other group was unaware of all this. When they returned to the hotels four weeks later, the result showed that informed group lost weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and body mass index. They simply became healthier just by being mindful of what they were doing.
It is the mind that affects the most and not the exercise. They always see themselves when they’re eating and forget to notice the amount of calories burned while going to fetch food. This study reveals that we potentially have far more control over our psychological and physical functioning than most of us realize.
