Workout, Exercise or Movement Snack? w/ Ben Greenfield

Workplace Hero

Guest Hero: Ben Greenfield. Fitness, nutrition and human performance consultant at BenGreenfieldFitness.com

Hello, my cubicle cardio, open space sit-ups, corner office chin-ups, home den dips, and coffee shop sprinters. My name is Brock Armstrong, and I am not the Workplace Hero. Nor am I the Workspace Guru, the Office Space Sage, or the Business Space Mentor. We are in this together, me and you. One podcast at a time. Improving our lives and hopefully dragging a few of our co-workers with us.

Now, as we warm-up for our main-set (do you like my athlete lingo there?), I want to thank some true heroes - the folks who have left reviews for this podcast in iTunes. Thank you to: AstridH77, TreeClown, Westcoastlistener, JW108, WallyPhD, KristenStaite, and Kdigitty108 for leaving all 5 star reviews along with some helpful feedback as well. I truly appreciate it — and, if you are a podcast listener I know you have heard this a million times - but leaving a review really does help new listeners find the podcast. Plus it makes me feel good and serves as a form of payment for the hours per week that I spend putting these episodes together. Think of it this way: if you can’t put dollars in my pocket, you can put some love in my heart.

Ok! On with the show.

I found a great list of “5 Horrible Exercise Excuses” over at wellnessmama.com and and a few more over at BreakingMuscle.com that I think sum up the top excuses that I have also heard over my years of being a Fitness Coach. They are:

Excuse #1: I’m too Busy Yes. I get that you are busy. I don’t pretend to be the busiest person in the world and I’ve even used this excuse. But I bet if you were to truly track how you use every minute of your day, you could find a spare 20 minutes… probably more. Remember in the last podcast episode at workplacehero.me/distractions how we learned that we check our smart phones 105 times per day? If we have time to check our phones every 6 minutes, surely we can get up and break a sweat occasionally too… right?

Excuse #2: It’s too Expensive If you think the only way to get fit is to join an expensive gym, buy a bunch of fancy equipment, or hire a personal trainer then, yeah it’s probably too expensive for most of us. Good news is, later in this episode you will learn that you don’t need any of that to exercise. You truly only need your body and some inspiration. And maybe an old pair of shorts.

Excuse #3: I’m in Pain Yes, this excuse does have merit if you are injured or dealing with chronic pain - you do not want to “push through it”. We here at Workplace Hero do not believe in “no pain, no gain” but most injuries can be handled appropriately with some modification, adaptation, or simply choosing a different way to exercise. If you are dealing with chronic pain you may also want to consider the very real possibility that your inactive lifestyle is contributing to or perhaps even causing the chronic pain.

Excuse #4: I Move Enough Already This was my excuse for a while too because I worked in an old building with very few washrooms and only one extremely slow elevator. I hear this excuse from new parents as well. Don’t get me wrong: If you have an active job or lifestyle that keeps you on your feet then you are doing better than a lot of people out there… but there is still something mentally and emotionally rewarding about YOU, focusing on YOUR body, through YOUR own dedicated workout - not simply as a byproduct of having hyper kids, a slavedriver boss or having to take 4 flights of stairs every time you have to pee.

Excuse #5: I Don’t Like it At the heart of so many of these excuses is this: Exercise isn’t fun. It’s boring. It’s uncomfortable. And believe me, I tried a variety of things before I found something that really “fit” for me too. It took me a while to figure it out and, get this, it keeps changing. For a while I loved running, then I rediscovered hockey, then triathlon, then you couldn’t keep me out of the pool, then obstacle courses and now I am addicted to lifting heavy stuff. There are so many options - don’t let your preconceived notions of how boring it is to pump iron or how strange you feel taking yoga stop you for digging into an evening shinny game or a lunch hour power walk.

Excuse #6: I’m Too Old No one is too old to exercise. Walking is exercise. Yoga is exercise. There are so many forms of exercise to choose from, ranging from low impact to high impact to mobility to balance to strength training. There are even classes specifically designed for seniors. A great place to start looking for classes that fit your age and ability is your local YMCA.

Excuse #7: I Have a Bad Back Unless the doctor tells you to just lay in bed, activity is the best way to keep your back limber, to strengthen it, and to prevent additional pain. Dr. Ullrich, a board-certified orthopedic spine surgeon and medical director of Spine-health states “bed rest for more than a day or two can actually undermine healing.” But here is a PSA: If you suffer from back pain, see a doctor or physical therapist for a correct diagnosis, as well as for specific exercises and stretches to help alleviate pain. Don’t be a wimp but also don’t be an idiot.

Excuse #8: I Am Too Fat You have to start somewhere, right? Believing that you are too overweight to exercise is like saying you're too skinny to eat. Your body needs exercise just the way your body needs food. No matter what number you are on a scale, you can do someth ing to start the process of strengthening your bones and joints for the load that they're carrying. If you are extremely self-concious, you can workout at home. Please don’t fall into the trap of believing that exercise has to hurt or make you sweaty and out of breath to be effective. Exercise is often a matter of just moving more. It doesn’t need to be a difficult class in the gym or excessive time spent lifting weights. Start small and work your way up to more challenge and volume in activity only when you’re ready to do so.

And lastly, this has to be my favourite excuse of all. And by favourite, I don’t mean that I like it.

Excuse #9: I’m Skinny, So I Don’t Need to Exercise Gah! As a species we have to stop confusing exercise with weight loss. They are not the same thing! There are so many benefits we get from exercise - weight loss is only one and honestly, it is by far the smallest one as well. Most weight loss experts will tell you that results are 80% from diet and only 20% from exercise. Yes, lean mass is usually associated with better health, but it is not an indicator of your organ health, lipids levels, or insulin sensitivity. Exercise is not just to keep our weight down, and let’s try to to disassociate weight loss from fitness. Weight loss is a number, fitness is a process that benefits our entire body and mind.

Ok. Enough with the excuses! Let’s talk about why you would want to exercise in the first place. If it isn’t that great of a way to lose weight, what is it good for?

Well, the body is a complex thing and a lot (and I mean A LOT) happens in your body when you first start working out. Let’s take a look at just a few.

Starting with changes in your muscles, which use glucose and a thing called ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) for contraction and movement. To create more ATP, your body needs extra oxygen, so breathing increases and your heart starts pumping more blood to your muscles. Then, as you workout, tiny tears in your muscles occur and make them grow bigger and stronger as those tiny tears heal between exercise sessions.

There are also changes in your lungs. As your muscles call for more oxygen (as much as 15 times more oxygen than when you're at rest), your breathing rate increases. Once the muscles surrounding your lungs cannot move any faster, you've reached what's called your VO2 max—your...