July 2, 2023 • 15 mins
Staying healthy doesn’t need to be a pain. In this episode of the Happy Families crossover series you’ll hear some tips and tricks to get exercise into your life in a meaningful way – no matter how busy your home and work schedules are.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's doctor Amantha imbehere from How I Work. I am
currently doing a collaboration with doctor Justin Coulson, the host
of Parental Guidance and also from the Happy Families podcast.
In the last two episodes, we spoke about how to
get a better night's sleep, and last week we spoke
all about work life balance. Today we'll be delving into
(00:25):
physical health and some easy and practical ways we can
all build more movement into our lives.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Amantha, this is an area that I know you are
so passionate about. I've got a bit of skin in
the game as well. I've made no secret of the
fact that I love to bike, ride, I love to surf.
Anyone who's followed me for any length of time knows
that stuff. But you've dived into the research, and what
I'd love to hear you share is what you've found
(00:57):
in terms of research benefits for physical activity, just the summary.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
What do we know overall?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Well, we know that it's probably the biggest lever we
can pull to live a longer and healthier and happier life.
So it certainly helps with physical health, that's not surprising.
But it also helps massively with mental health and certainly.
There's some research that I've read that has compared the
(01:25):
impact of regular exercise, cardiovascular exercise specifically, and they've compared
that to antidepressant medication and the results in terms of
reducing symptoms for depression are pretty much on par which
I think is quite amazing. So the effects of medication
(01:47):
without any of the side effects.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
So I came across a brand new study. In fact,
I mentioned it on one of my podcasts a little
over a month ago. University of South Australia. They did
a huge meta analysis where they studied all the studies,
something like ninety plus studies with one hundred and twenty
thousand participants, and they published in the British Medical Journal.
I think that they said that exercise, physical exercise, even
(02:12):
in the short term, like within the first week or so,
can be one and a half times more effective than psychopharmacology,
and one and a half times more effective than sitting
down on the couch and telling somebody about your problems.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Like it's that, it's that profoundly powerful.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
The thing is, when I think about a conversation like this,
I'm a keen cyclist. I'm awake at four o'clock several
mornings a week so that I can ride my bike,
or I go surfing when the serf's on.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
You love the gym, you love to be fit.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I mean, this is something that you've been really clear
about on your podcast for a long time now. Not
everybody feels the same way that you and I feel
about moving their bodies. I mean, we all know we're
supposed to do it. But if you say to somebody,
why don't you sign up for yoga or pilates, or
go to the gym and pump some waves, or go
on a bike ride, see if you can ride twenty
k's or sign up for that five k or ten
(02:57):
k fun run, go and do park run on a
Saturday morning. And sometimes people will say, no, I don't
like exercise. It doesn't feel nice, and I don't have
time to sign up for a class or do that
thing every day. In your research, what have you found
in terms of the necessity that we are exercising frequently
and intensely and having that structured kind of exercise.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Is it important? Does it work at there other ways
around this?
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Well, I've got a couple of strategies that I think
might help. Firstly, if you look at the exercise guidelines
from the government or from the World Health Organization, they
say that we should be doing I think up to
one hundred and fifty minutes of moderate intensity exercise every week.
And I imagine, you know, people listening to this, they're busy,
(03:45):
and if they don't have a regular exercise routine right now,
that's a huge ask to go. You need to find
one hundred and fifty extra minutes in your week to
move your body.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Oh, I've got a question about that. Though that's two
and a half hours across seven days. It's not a
huge amount of time, so that's not a question as
a statement, But what's moderate intensity?
Speaker 3 (04:04):
What does that actually mean?
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Modern intensity means where let's say you're going on a
fast walk, so you can still have a conversation, but
you're a bit huffy and puffy. I would say it
is a good definition of moderate intensity, but you're right, like,
if you break it down over seven days, it's not
that much. But still I feel like it's a big
hurdle to a lot of people developing a regularly team.
(04:26):
But there's some really exciting research that came out earlier
this year into a concept called VILPA, so that is
an acronym that stands for vigorous. Yeah, it's cool. It's
vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity. So this is so VILPA.
Might be you're walking to the train station and you
(04:46):
can see the train at the platform, you are not
at the platform, so you sprint for a minute to
get to the platform. It might be you're playing chasing
with your kids in the backyard and you do a
quick sprint to get to them. Those sorts of things.
So VILPA is typically bounce of intense activity that have
(05:08):
just woven into our day to day kind of choices
that we make. It might last for a minute or two,
and what we know is that if you do just
three or four minutes of VILPA per day, that's been
associated with a forty percent reduction in all cause mortality,
which basically means death from any cause, which is pretty
(05:32):
amazing compared to not building any kind of VILPA into
your day and just kind of going about your day
fairly setentry.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
That's astonishing. Forty percent is a really big number. Are
you familiar with the idea of a blue zone, a
blue zone.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Like in terms of exercise intensity.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
The blue zone in terms of aging longevity and health.
So I wish I could remember the book that I
read about it in There's been a whole lot of
research done. There are certain communities around the world where
people live much longer than most humans live, and they
live much more actively and happily. They're well being is high.
It's not that they're living longer and dying longer. They're
(06:09):
actually living longer and then dying quickly of natural causes
when their body says, okay, I'm actually done now, rather
than having this long term decades of medication as we
slowly pass away.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
In a nursing home.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
These blue zones, there's just certain communities, like I remember
reading about one in Japan where the average age that
people live to is.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Somewhere around about one hundred to one hundred and five.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
And what the research was suggesting was, I guess it
ties in with this vulpa thing. They don't sit on couches.
They get on and off the floor like twenty or
thirty times a day when they're walking, and then they
sit down. They sit down on the ground, and then
they have to do the extra work getting from the
ground instead of getting off the couch. A totally different
amount of effort, even the way they use the bathroom.
(06:52):
So we've got these very comfortable well I don't know
how comfortable you do is, but they're more comfortable than
having to squat over a hole. I guess what I'm saying.
But that requires the use of leg muscles, and so
I don't know if it's the same as vigorous, intimittent
last of physical activity. But there's this ongoing use of
the body, this physical activity, just regular daily movement. And
(07:13):
it made me think maybe we should get on the
floor with the kids more. Maybe we should go and
kick that foot you or throw that frisbee.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Or go for that walk along the beach. This is
what I'm getting from you.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
If we want to live and work happy, then moving
our bodies matters, Amantha In. But you are known as
a productivity specialist. I mean, this is the sort of
thing that you do. So many parents, so many adults,
(07:41):
so many people will say, I really should exercise, But
I just I don't know. What would you say would
be useful to create an exercise habit, even if it's
only five or ten minutes a day, something really simple.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
How do you build that habit?
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Something that I have used a lot in my life.
Is a strategy called temptation bundling. So this is where
you think about the activity that you do not like doing,
and for a lot of people that is exercise. Most
people don't like riding on a bike justin I'm like
you who gets so much joy from it? Like, put
(08:16):
most people on an exercise bike and they are very unhappy.
So identify the type of exercise that maybe you want
to do, but then with temptation bundling, you pair it
with something that does bring you joy or does bring you.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Pleasure, like eating chocolate.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Like eating chocolate, but maybe not while you're on the
exercise bike. Let's go with another example. So this is
from my life justin. So I have an exercise bike
at home, but I do not like the exercise bike
right now. I'm very into slow jogging, but on rainy
days an exercise bike is preferable. But I don't like it.
(08:53):
And so what I do is I say to myself, Okay,
Like there are a few TV shows. Some TV shows
I like that I feel no guilt watching, like Succession,
but other TV shows I feel a major amount of
guilt watching, like The Bachelort, not.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
The Israelian one.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
It has to be the US. It's so trashy and I.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Used to think you were so great, and then you've
said that.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
But but you can still think I'm great because I
don't let myself watch it unless I'm on the exercise bike.
So I am bundling this thing that brings me so
much guilty pleasure. But it's no longer guilty because I'm
on the exercise bike. It's just bringing me pleasure and
it's distracting me from the pain of the exercise bike.
(09:38):
So we can apply that to anything that we don't
like doing. So think about the unpleasurable activity. And today
we're obviously talking about exercise, you know, in the context
of physical health. But find something that you really love
that you can do with it, Like it might be
going for a walk and listening to your favorite podcast,
for example, and only letting yourself do that when you're walking,
(10:02):
which makes it even more pleasurable. The unpleasurable activity.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
So this reminds me of two things.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
It reminds me of the habit stacking principle, which I'm
sure you're very very familiar with. Rather than temptation bundling,
it's just Okay, I already do this thing all the time.
So every time I do this thing, I'm going to
do this other thing. I'm going to do some exercise.
I wish I could remember where I read it. It would
have been at least ten years ago now, but I
read in a book somebody was talking about the way
they habit stacked.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
They wanted to do more push ups in their life,
but they could.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
They just didn't want to do them in the morning,
and there was no other convenient time, And so they
made this commitment that every time they went to the
bathroom during the day, when they left the bathroom, they'd
find a place where it was hygienic enough to get
down on the floor and they would go and do.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Ten or twenty push ups.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
And they're stacking an exercise habit on top of something
that they already do. It sort of fits in with
the temptation bubbling, but it's just a different take on it,
I guess. And I started doing that, and for a
little while I actually had a chest amanthe I and
then I let the habit go. But again, this exercise
it works, and I think I want to put in
another plug as well for nature as there's something about
(11:10):
being in nature that is both soothing and invigorating, and
researchers have found that it encourages pro social behavior in
kids and in adults, that feeling of awe and wonder.
And there's just something great about being up early, watching
the sunrise as you ride your bike along the coast
or through the mountains.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Sorry, I'm I'm getting on again.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Sorry about that, but these are these are kind of
my ideas. Last word, I guess if we really want
to help our family to be healthier, I'm thinking now
about the parents who are worried about their kids spending
too much time in front of screens and just not
building those good health habits that encourage physical wellness and exercise.
(11:53):
What else sort of springs to mind for you if
there was one more thing that you could throw up there.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Well, I think almost a combination of what we've been
talking about in terms of habit stacking, which I love
for people that want to know more about that. Bj
Fog wrote a book called Tiny Habits, who I think
was one of the first people to talk about habit
stacking in the public eye, but also temptation bundling. So,
for example, I'm sure that many people have kids that
(12:18):
like their devices and want to be playing more Minecraft
or more Roadblocks or something like that, or is that
just my daughter? Probably not, So you could say to them, okay,
you can do that, but give me ten squats or
ten push ups or ten burpies first, for example, and
every five minutes we're going to take a burpee break.
(12:39):
So incorporating it either through habits stacking, so it's like
that's the thing that you do before you can unlock
your screen time or building it in. I think both
those things could make getting your kids or encouraging your
kids to exercise an easier ask.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I love this and it's just problems with One more
quick thought from me, and that is if the kids
don't want to move their bodies, you know what is
so effective at getting them to move their bodies is
you moving yours and doing it with them? Just the
quality of connection. My kids are quite happy to go
for a walk with me. They're happy to go for
a run with me or a ride with me, so
long as I go slow enough. But even if I'm
just doing some physical activity, like recently did the beep
(13:20):
test in the backyard and the kids were like, oh,
wherein they just wanted to see how far they could
run and for what level they could get to. There's
something about connection and physical activity that is great for relationships.
It's great for the family, and it's great for our
well being.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
I couldn't agree more. And I just want to share
one more anecdote on that. I mentioned that now my
cardiovascular exercise of choice is slow jogging. I've never been thought.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
That I can't do slow jogging. If I'm going to run,
it's got to be fast for me.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
I just want to avoid getting injured because I used
to do a bit of jogging, but I got injured.
And this was many years ago, and then I just
left that side of me behind. But then my daughter
has run club Thursday before school, and she's not a
mad keen runner, but she does voluntarily participate in run club,
and I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could
(14:12):
do that with her because they often look for parent
volunteers because they're running through the streets of the suburb
where the school's located. And so I did couch to
five k and I'm now like a runner or slash
slow jogger again, because I thought, wouldn't that be a
great connection opportunity once a week with my daughter to
(14:33):
participate in run club together, and now I can run
far enough that I can do that with her. Today's
episode of How I Work was produced by iHeartRadio. If
you would like more tips on how to live and
work better, head to Amatha dot substack dot com to
(14:54):
sign up for weekly and practical tips to get better
at life. And if you're not a subscriber of How
I Work, simply click subscribe or follow and you will
get episodes every Thursday.
It's doctor Amantha imbehere from How I Work. I am
currently doing a collaboration with doctor Justin Coulson, the host
of Parental Guidance and also from the Happy Families podcast.
In the last two episodes, we spoke about how to
get a better night's sleep, and last week we spoke
all about work life balance. Today we'll be delving into
(00:25):
physical health and some easy and practical ways we can
all build more movement into our lives.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Amantha, this is an area that I know you are
so passionate about. I've got a bit of skin in
the game as well. I've made no secret of the
fact that I love to bike, ride, I love to surf.
Anyone who's followed me for any length of time knows
that stuff. But you've dived into the research, and what
I'd love to hear you share is what you've found
(00:57):
in terms of research benefits for physical activity, just the summary.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
What do we know overall?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Well, we know that it's probably the biggest lever we
can pull to live a longer and healthier and happier life.
So it certainly helps with physical health, that's not surprising.
But it also helps massively with mental health and certainly.
There's some research that I've read that has compared the
(01:25):
impact of regular exercise, cardiovascular exercise specifically, and they've compared
that to antidepressant medication and the results in terms of
reducing symptoms for depression are pretty much on par which
I think is quite amazing. So the effects of medication
(01:47):
without any of the side effects.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
So I came across a brand new study. In fact,
I mentioned it on one of my podcasts a little
over a month ago. University of South Australia. They did
a huge meta analysis where they studied all the studies,
something like ninety plus studies with one hundred and twenty
thousand participants, and they published in the British Medical Journal.
I think that they said that exercise, physical exercise, even
(02:12):
in the short term, like within the first week or so,
can be one and a half times more effective than psychopharmacology,
and one and a half times more effective than sitting
down on the couch and telling somebody about your problems.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Like it's that, it's that profoundly powerful.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
The thing is, when I think about a conversation like this,
I'm a keen cyclist. I'm awake at four o'clock several
mornings a week so that I can ride my bike,
or I go surfing when the serf's on.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
You love the gym, you love to be fit.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I mean, this is something that you've been really clear
about on your podcast for a long time now. Not
everybody feels the same way that you and I feel
about moving their bodies. I mean, we all know we're
supposed to do it. But if you say to somebody,
why don't you sign up for yoga or pilates, or
go to the gym and pump some waves, or go
on a bike ride, see if you can ride twenty
k's or sign up for that five k or ten
(02:57):
k fun run, go and do park run on a
Saturday morning. And sometimes people will say, no, I don't
like exercise. It doesn't feel nice, and I don't have
time to sign up for a class or do that
thing every day. In your research, what have you found
in terms of the necessity that we are exercising frequently
and intensely and having that structured kind of exercise.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Is it important? Does it work at there other ways
around this?
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Well, I've got a couple of strategies that I think
might help. Firstly, if you look at the exercise guidelines
from the government or from the World Health Organization, they
say that we should be doing I think up to
one hundred and fifty minutes of moderate intensity exercise every week.
And I imagine, you know, people listening to this, they're busy,
(03:45):
and if they don't have a regular exercise routine right now,
that's a huge ask to go. You need to find
one hundred and fifty extra minutes in your week to
move your body.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Oh, I've got a question about that. Though that's two
and a half hours across seven days. It's not a
huge amount of time, so that's not a question as
a statement, But what's moderate intensity?
Speaker 3 (04:04):
What does that actually mean?
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Modern intensity means where let's say you're going on a
fast walk, so you can still have a conversation, but
you're a bit huffy and puffy. I would say it
is a good definition of moderate intensity, but you're right, like,
if you break it down over seven days, it's not
that much. But still I feel like it's a big
hurdle to a lot of people developing a regularly team.
(04:26):
But there's some really exciting research that came out earlier
this year into a concept called VILPA, so that is
an acronym that stands for vigorous. Yeah, it's cool. It's
vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity. So this is so VILPA.
Might be you're walking to the train station and you
(04:46):
can see the train at the platform, you are not
at the platform, so you sprint for a minute to
get to the platform. It might be you're playing chasing
with your kids in the backyard and you do a
quick sprint to get to them. Those sorts of things.
So VILPA is typically bounce of intense activity that have
(05:08):
just woven into our day to day kind of choices
that we make. It might last for a minute or two,
and what we know is that if you do just
three or four minutes of VILPA per day, that's been
associated with a forty percent reduction in all cause mortality,
which basically means death from any cause, which is pretty
(05:32):
amazing compared to not building any kind of VILPA into
your day and just kind of going about your day
fairly setentry.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
That's astonishing. Forty percent is a really big number. Are
you familiar with the idea of a blue zone, a
blue zone.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Like in terms of exercise intensity.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
The blue zone in terms of aging longevity and health.
So I wish I could remember the book that I
read about it in There's been a whole lot of
research done. There are certain communities around the world where
people live much longer than most humans live, and they
live much more actively and happily. They're well being is high.
It's not that they're living longer and dying longer. They're
(06:09):
actually living longer and then dying quickly of natural causes
when their body says, okay, I'm actually done now, rather
than having this long term decades of medication as we
slowly pass away.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
In a nursing home.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
These blue zones, there's just certain communities, like I remember
reading about one in Japan where the average age that
people live to is.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Somewhere around about one hundred to one hundred and five.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
And what the research was suggesting was, I guess it
ties in with this vulpa thing. They don't sit on couches.
They get on and off the floor like twenty or
thirty times a day when they're walking, and then they
sit down. They sit down on the ground, and then
they have to do the extra work getting from the
ground instead of getting off the couch. A totally different
amount of effort, even the way they use the bathroom.
(06:52):
So we've got these very comfortable well I don't know
how comfortable you do is, but they're more comfortable than
having to squat over a hole. I guess what I'm saying.
But that requires the use of leg muscles, and so
I don't know if it's the same as vigorous, intimittent
last of physical activity. But there's this ongoing use of
the body, this physical activity, just regular daily movement. And
(07:13):
it made me think maybe we should get on the
floor with the kids more. Maybe we should go and
kick that foot you or throw that frisbee.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Or go for that walk along the beach. This is
what I'm getting from you.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
If we want to live and work happy, then moving
our bodies matters, Amantha In. But you are known as
a productivity specialist. I mean, this is the sort of
thing that you do. So many parents, so many adults,
(07:41):
so many people will say, I really should exercise, But
I just I don't know. What would you say would
be useful to create an exercise habit, even if it's
only five or ten minutes a day, something really simple.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
How do you build that habit?
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Something that I have used a lot in my life.
Is a strategy called temptation bundling. So this is where
you think about the activity that you do not like doing,
and for a lot of people that is exercise. Most
people don't like riding on a bike justin I'm like
you who gets so much joy from it? Like, put
(08:16):
most people on an exercise bike and they are very unhappy.
So identify the type of exercise that maybe you want
to do, but then with temptation bundling, you pair it
with something that does bring you joy or does bring you.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Pleasure, like eating chocolate.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Like eating chocolate, but maybe not while you're on the
exercise bike. Let's go with another example. So this is
from my life justin. So I have an exercise bike
at home, but I do not like the exercise bike
right now. I'm very into slow jogging, but on rainy
days an exercise bike is preferable. But I don't like it.
(08:53):
And so what I do is I say to myself, Okay,
Like there are a few TV shows. Some TV shows
I like that I feel no guilt watching, like Succession,
but other TV shows I feel a major amount of
guilt watching, like The Bachelort, not.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
The Israelian one.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
It has to be the US. It's so trashy and I.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Used to think you were so great, and then you've
said that.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
But but you can still think I'm great because I
don't let myself watch it unless I'm on the exercise bike.
So I am bundling this thing that brings me so
much guilty pleasure. But it's no longer guilty because I'm
on the exercise bike. It's just bringing me pleasure and
it's distracting me from the pain of the exercise bike.
(09:38):
So we can apply that to anything that we don't
like doing. So think about the unpleasurable activity. And today
we're obviously talking about exercise, you know, in the context
of physical health. But find something that you really love
that you can do with it, Like it might be
going for a walk and listening to your favorite podcast,
for example, and only letting yourself do that when you're walking,
(10:02):
which makes it even more pleasurable. The unpleasurable activity.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
So this reminds me of two things.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
It reminds me of the habit stacking principle, which I'm
sure you're very very familiar with. Rather than temptation bundling,
it's just Okay, I already do this thing all the time.
So every time I do this thing, I'm going to
do this other thing. I'm going to do some exercise.
I wish I could remember where I read it. It would
have been at least ten years ago now, but I
read in a book somebody was talking about the way
they habit stacked.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
They wanted to do more push ups in their life,
but they could.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
They just didn't want to do them in the morning,
and there was no other convenient time, And so they
made this commitment that every time they went to the
bathroom during the day, when they left the bathroom, they'd
find a place where it was hygienic enough to get
down on the floor and they would go and do.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Ten or twenty push ups.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
And they're stacking an exercise habit on top of something
that they already do. It sort of fits in with
the temptation bubbling, but it's just a different take on it,
I guess. And I started doing that, and for a
little while I actually had a chest amanthe I and
then I let the habit go. But again, this exercise
it works, and I think I want to put in
another plug as well for nature as there's something about
(11:10):
being in nature that is both soothing and invigorating, and
researchers have found that it encourages pro social behavior in
kids and in adults, that feeling of awe and wonder.
And there's just something great about being up early, watching
the sunrise as you ride your bike along the coast
or through the mountains.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Sorry, I'm I'm getting on again.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Sorry about that, but these are these are kind of
my ideas. Last word, I guess if we really want
to help our family to be healthier, I'm thinking now
about the parents who are worried about their kids spending
too much time in front of screens and just not
building those good health habits that encourage physical wellness and exercise.
(11:53):
What else sort of springs to mind for you if
there was one more thing that you could throw up there.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Well, I think almost a combination of what we've been
talking about in terms of habit stacking, which I love
for people that want to know more about that. Bj
Fog wrote a book called Tiny Habits, who I think
was one of the first people to talk about habit
stacking in the public eye, but also temptation bundling. So,
for example, I'm sure that many people have kids that
(12:18):
like their devices and want to be playing more Minecraft
or more Roadblocks or something like that, or is that
just my daughter? Probably not, So you could say to them, okay,
you can do that, but give me ten squats or
ten push ups or ten burpies first, for example, and
every five minutes we're going to take a burpee break.
(12:39):
So incorporating it either through habits stacking, so it's like
that's the thing that you do before you can unlock
your screen time or building it in. I think both
those things could make getting your kids or encouraging your
kids to exercise an easier ask.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I love this and it's just problems with One more
quick thought from me, and that is if the kids
don't want to move their bodies, you know what is
so effective at getting them to move their bodies is
you moving yours and doing it with them? Just the
quality of connection. My kids are quite happy to go
for a walk with me. They're happy to go for
a run with me or a ride with me, so
long as I go slow enough. But even if I'm
just doing some physical activity, like recently did the beep
(13:20):
test in the backyard and the kids were like, oh,
wherein they just wanted to see how far they could
run and for what level they could get to. There's
something about connection and physical activity that is great for relationships.
It's great for the family, and it's great for our
well being.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
I couldn't agree more. And I just want to share
one more anecdote on that. I mentioned that now my
cardiovascular exercise of choice is slow jogging. I've never been thought.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
That I can't do slow jogging. If I'm going to run,
it's got to be fast for me.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
I just want to avoid getting injured because I used
to do a bit of jogging, but I got injured.
And this was many years ago, and then I just
left that side of me behind. But then my daughter
has run club Thursday before school, and she's not a
mad keen runner, but she does voluntarily participate in run club,
and I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could
(14:12):
do that with her because they often look for parent
volunteers because they're running through the streets of the suburb
where the school's located. And so I did couch to
five k and I'm now like a runner or slash
slow jogger again, because I thought, wouldn't that be a
great connection opportunity once a week with my daughter to
(14:33):
participate in run club together, and now I can run
far enough that I can do that with her. Today's
episode of How I Work was produced by iHeartRadio. If
you would like more tips on how to live and
work better, head to Amatha dot substack dot com to
(14:54):
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