What would it take to persuade people to exercise? The desire to lose weight or improve appearance? Avoid heart disease, cancer or diabetes? Reduce blood pressure or cholesterol? Protect the bones? Living Healthy Until Old Age? The answer to these questions is actually the same as the essence of the answer to the question of how we cultivate motivation to write. In academia, writing services such as https://writercheap.com are good instant options but in the world of health, nothing is truly instant.
It would be thought that any of these motives would be enough to get the Americans to exercise, but the results of some studies show something else.
Apparently, public health experts, physicians, and media practitioners are using inefficient tactics to motivate sedentary individuals to become physically active. For decades people have been bombarded with messages that regular exercise is needed to lose weight, prevent serious illness, and encourage healthy aging. And, yes, a large majority of Americans – two-thirds of whom are either overweight or obese – have not yet been able to swallow the “exercise pill.”
Now some researchers by psychologists strongly suggest that it is time to stop thinking about future health, weight loss and body image as motivators. Instead, experts recommend the strategy that marketers used to sell products: describing physical activity as a way to enhance current well-being and happiness.
– We need to make exercise relevant in people’s daily lives. Everyone’s agenda is bogged down with endless chores.
Reformulating the message
– It should be presented as attractive behavior that can benefit us now. Those who say they exercise for the benefits of everyday life exercise more throughout the year than those who claim to value exercise for health benefits.
Based on studies of what motivates people to adopt and maintain physical activity, we should stop defining moderate exercise as a prescription that requires 150 minutes of aerobic or running activity per week. Instead, public health authorities must begin to focus on the emotional aspects by which it is essential to fit it into their frantic lives.
– Instant rewards are more motivating than distant ones. Feeling happy and less stressed is more motivating than having heart disease or cancer, perhaps someday in the future.
In a study of 252 office workers, David K. Ingledew and David Markland, psychologists at the University of Wales, found that while many begin to exercise as a way to lose weight and improve appearance, such motivations do not keep them exercising. According to the researchers’ conclusion, the benefits of well-being and exercise pleasure should be emphasized.
Physical activity is an elixir of life, but we do not teach it to people. We tell them it’s a pill to be taken or a punishment for the bad numbers on the scale. Maintaining physical activity is a motivational and emotional issue, not a medical one.
Some studies have shown that what makes people stand up and keep moving depends on their age, gender, life circumstances, and even ethnicity. For college students, for example, physical attractiveness usually leads to a list of reasons to start exercising, although what makes them continue to appear to be the stress relief provided by a regular exercise program.
The elderly, on the other hand, may begin with health concerns. However, what keeps them active is friendships, the sense of community and camaraderie that would otherwise not be present in their lives.
In a recent study of 1,690 overweight or obese middle-aged men and women, we found that improving well-being daily was the most influential factor for women in the study. The men indicated they were more motivated by more distant health benefits. If we have little motivation to even run regularly, we need to build a belief that simple sports such as running in the morning have a strong correlation with happiness.
