The Exercise Myth: When Exercise is Beneficial, and When It Can Actually Harm You

Anyone who has ever been serious about getting fit or losing weight…or, even better, losing weight and keeping it off knows that they are going to have to get their heart rate up for a sustained period of time several days a week.

Unfortunately, many people have been conditioned to think that to do this, they must exercise. Misunderstandings like this, coupled with the absence of the accurate model of the human needs, all but guarantees that millions of people are doomed to never lose weight and keep it off.

If you have done the full assessment of all 16 needs, you know where you stand regarding the desire for “physical activity” or exercise. If you rate high on this one, you’ll likely do well with the standard exercise regimens. If, however, you rated low on this one, going to the gym will most likely always be a struggle for you, and if this is the case, it is doing you more harm than good!

As you recall, we started off the first night talking a great deal about “stress”. To reiterate, the reason for that was the fact that the “stress response” all but makes it impossible to lose weight in a healthy way and then maintain that weight loss.

For most people, exercise is a magnificent way to counter the stress response. It lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease and many different types of metabolic challenges, and, overall, makes people feel better. However…
Exercise is “stress” buffering and health enhancing ONLY when you actually WANT to do it!

In rats and humans alike, when forced to exercise (even when self-forcing through will power) overall health worsens.

That’s right; the “stress response” negates any beneficial aspects of exercise, and actually causes your health, and ability to lose weight and keep it off, to go the opposite direction of the one you desire most.

Because of the incredibly detrimental impact the “stress response” has on blood glucose levels, and the increase of stress hormones like adrenalin and cortisol, exercise will actually play a big role in making sure someone does NOT lose body fat. (We’ve all seen the people who walk, walk, walk or run, run, run every single day, and yet…they are still FAT)

So, what’s a person to do, then, if the goal is to lose some weight and then stay close to that weight for many years to come?
Wouldn’t you know, the answer comes right back to, you guessed it ...the Human Needs Assessment!

If for example, you rated low on “physical activity”, chances are good that you’ve never had a period in your life where you went to the gym or some kind of intense exercise class, month after month, for years on end. And, it’s not likely that you ever will. (I didn’t say you “can’t” just that it is not likely)

This is where many “fitness gurus” are completely lost. They urge you to use “self-discipline” and “do it even if you don’t feel like it!” This makes for good television, but is a very poor strategy for long-term weight loss.

Let me ask you, even if you rate low on “physical activity”, isn’t it true that you have been doing some kind of activity, in the past, like playing with the kids or grandkids, or in the woods looking for a certain kind of leaf you needed for a craft project etc. and after a while, you realized that your heart rate was up, and that you had in fact been doing a fair amount of physical activity?

Most have, but because you didn’t set out to “exercise”, specifically, you had actually been enjoying yourself; you were not focused on the “physical exercise” aspect of what you were doing, you were pleasantly distracted and allowed something else to capture the foreground of you awareness.

When you are active in such a way that you are enjoying it, you will avoid the stress response, and tap into the benefits of physical activity. When you don’t enjoy what you are doing, you’ve lost most of the benefit, and have even created some negative consequences.

Look at your needs assessment. What are your top or HIGH rated needs/desires? This is where you will find the “secret” for engaging in activity that you will enjoy, and get your heart rate up in a way that you almost won’t even notice.

Romance/Sex is a HIGH rated need/desire for many people; even for some of those who have a LOW rating on physical activity. Interesting, eh?

The research is piled high on the ability of sex to increase the heart rate and usher forth the identical benefits of exercise.

Honor is another need/desire we can examine. If you rate HIGH on honor, what if you were engaged in an ongoing fundraiser for someone or something that you felt very strongly about? Maybe you were being paid so much for every mile you walk, jog, etc. In this case, you would not be going out to exercise every day, you would be doing something for the purpose of meeting the need/desire of HONOR, and the way you felt about the activity would change everything. More specifically, it would avoid the “stress response”.

Whenever I am working with a client who is dealing with a long standing problem, I make sure we have an understanding from the start. I say “You’ve been dealing with this for 5 years now. Would you agree that if you knew how to take care of it on your own, you would have already?” They almost always say “Yes”.

I follow with this; “There may be some things I ask you to do, that may not make sense to you, or may clash with some of your beliefs. However, since your way hasn’t worked out so well, and you are paying me to help you, let’s do my way. Do I have your full commitment to my way, even if it doesn’t make sense at first?”

If some of the ideas in this article are at odds with what you have used up until now…that’s wonderful. It means that it is new, and “new “means it is different from what you had done that didn’t work, in the past.

© Copyright 2010-Vincent Harris-All Rights Reserved.