Be like a kid.
Sometimes the best advice comes from the least expected places. This week, I bring you wise words from my seven year old, as she taught me how to ‘relax’ by dancing on our back deck:
“Let me show you how to be a kid. You just do the things your body tells you to do - the fun things!”
Healthy kids don’t have to set aside time to exercise, because exercise is simply part of their everyday life. They move constantly. They fidget, they chase their friends, they play sports and take gymnastics classes and dance.
As adults, sometimes, we too often stop doing all the ‘fun things’ our body tells us to do. We replace the fun things with work, and stress, and sitting and to-do lists. We have to schedule exercise in, just to get it done.
But what if we started looking at exercise like a kid again?
Did you know that most of the things to do count as exercise - even some of the things you do for fun? Anytime you are up and out of your chair, you are burning energy. Self-care, household tasks and leisure activities and hobbies - they all require movement. The intensity of each activity varies, but the concept is very much the same - and becomes even more important, for older adults. Older adults spend as much as 7-10 waking hours a day sitting. Have you ever seen a kid sit for 7 hours straight without being duct taped to a chair? (I know I haven’t..)
If we all choose to incorporate movement throughout our days, we wouldn’t have to stress so much about ‘exercising’ or getting your steps in or whatever else we’re doing to cross it off our to-do lists. It all counts and it all helps you be a healthier, more active person. Many of these activities even has an assigned ‘MET’ (metabolic equivalent) designed to help us understand how much energy it typically burns - and how much it ‘counts’ towards your daily exercise:
I’m not sharing these to give you something else to calculate each day, but to help you understand that any and all movement COUNTS and is GOOD FOR YOU. Want an even easier way to understand how much your activity counts towards exercise? Next time something you are doing that requires movement, try using this Rate of Perceived Exertion scale. The beauty of this scale is that it takes into account that what might be challenging to one person may be less challenging to the next. We all start from different places and our levels of reserves (physiological and functional) vary and using this scale helps to reflect this:
If you find yourself working between a 0-3, you are performing light exercise. If you are feeling a 4-6, you are performing moderate intensity exercise. If an activity has you pushing 7-9, you are working at a vigorous level. Long story short, if you garden for 30 minutes and FOR YOU, this feels like a 5/10 - you just completed 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise. THIS is how we get healthy.
Move like a kid. Do things you enjoy. Listen to your body. Exercise is Medicine - and all Movement is Exercise.
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