The Bare Facts About Why People Do Not Exercise Regularly and Eat to Fuel Their Bodies
My name is Julie, and you could say I’m a fitness fanatic. I am driven by the desire to help others live a healthier lifestyle through good nutrition and exercise. I want to teach others what I have learned about the connection between good nutrition and activity. In this article, I sum up what I believe to be the bare facts about why people do not exercise regularly and eat to fuel their bodies.
If you exercise regulary and eat to fuel your body, you can actually be more productive, improve performance, and open up new opporutnities. But, it’s going to take work. According to the Public Health Service, 60% of Americans do not work out regularly!
I was one of those people. I had a gym membership for years. I used the excuse of not having enough “time” to go to the gym. Over the years, I collected a lot of “As Seen on TV” exercise equipment to save time by working out at home. I also bought a treadmill, treadclimber, elliptical machine, three different versions of the Bowflex system, free weight equipment…and I still did not work out regularly. I had good intentions, but something just wasn’t working for me.
As I put on weight, I pondered the question of why I did not stay consistent with exercising. I was pretty good with the way I ate, but I watched my family eat high fat and sugar diets that resulted in a myriad of health problems. Although the list of excuses is long (no time, too expensisive, not having clothes that fit good enough to go to the gym, etc.), I believe the bare facts about why people do not exercise regulary and eat to fuel their bodies can be summed up in three words: education, intention, and inactivity.
Let me start with the education piece by telling you a little bit about my background. My grandmother was born during the Great Depression into a family with 13 children. Her family raised, hunted or caught most of the food on their table.
This might paint a picture of healthy farm living, but my family stretched their dollars with southern recipes laden in fat, sugar, and salt. I remember grandma saving bacon drippings. If she had flour, water and grease…biscuits and gravy were on the table, and the family was fed.
When my siblings and I were younger, we ate whatever we wanted. Seconds were expected. Fried pork chops or fried green tomatoes – it didn’t matter as long as it was fried.
We were active as children, playing outside and burning off a lot of energy. Over time, however, our activity levels decreased while our eating habits stayed the same.
Obesity now runs in our family, along with the health issues associated with it – high cholesterol, cancer, diabetes, fibromyalgia, and high blood pressure just to mention a few.
I recognized the connection between nutrition and health at an early age and began making simple substitutions in my nutrition by the time I was out of high school. I came to realize that most of the weight issues in my family from a lack of education in how to eat and maintain a high enough activity level.
The second major reason people do not exercise regularly and eat to fuel their bodies is intention. I was the last to put on noticeable weight in my family. I engaged in sports activities in high school, even in the summer months. After gaining just a few pounds in college, I joined the Air Force and maintained a pretty good activity level.
I continued to learn more about nutrition and challenged myself to keep making small changes in my diet. But when I separated from the Air Force, my activity level dropped and something else was happening…my metabolism was slowing. I found myself in a fight to be fit.
My metabolism was slowing! I found myself in a fight to be fit.
Good intentions were not enough.
As I already mentioned, I tried many things and spent a lot of money trying to stay fit. I had good intentions, but I guess I had not yet learned that good intentions are not enough.
You really have to have a strong reason for living a disciplined life that includes planning meals and exercises. You have to replace good intentions with disciplined desire. It happened for me as I watched the health of my family members continue to decline. I had to make a change in my life and then, in the lives of everyone I could.
You would think that all excuses for not exercising regularly or eating to fuel your body could be summed up as either lack of education or intention. Most people probably do fall into one or the other category, but there is another sad fact that discourages people from even trying and that fact is inactivity.
Inactivity promotes poor health and weight gain. Poor health and weight gain then interfere with activity.
Imagine someone who is obese, not just a little overweigt but enough overweight that it affects their movement, heart rate and breathing. It may be very difficult for them to do any exercise program for more than five or ten minutes. Inactivity breeds more inactivity and often poor eating habits soothe the stress of not be able to take off weight.
These are the bare facts about why people do not exercise regularly or eat to fuel their bodies. They don’t know how or why they should (lack of education), they have good intentions but are not consistent, or inactivity has all but stopped them in their tracks.
Your Free Beachbody Membership can give you the education you need, the consistency to back up your good intentions, and the support you need to press through painful periods of inactivity that prevent you from living your life to the fullest.
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