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Can You Be More Active?

‘To be more active’ would have to be one of the most popular new years’ resolutions people make. It is rather intriguing, then, to see or hear of the amount of people who don’t keep to their promises, given the importance of being active.

You needn’t someone to tell you that to lose weight you need to be active or to stay healthy you need to be active, yet the message seems to be lost when people think that they can achieve all of this without being active.

To say ‘I can be fit and healthy without exercise’ is really not too different to saying ‘I can be fit and healthy from lack of exercise’.

On the National Physical Activity Guidelines for Adults, you will find that the second guideline says ‘be active every day in as many ways as you can’. This may appear vague to a lot of us, and perhaps that is a natural reaction. But the guideline really says all that needs to be said – Just get out there and make everyday things a lot more active!

Ask yourself if you frequently do the following things:

Use the lift instead of the stairs?
Stand on escalators rather than walking on them?
Use the tumble dryer and not hang the washing out?
Can't find the TV remote so you’d rather just sit there and watch something boring?
Drive around the car park waiting for a closer parking spot to empty when there are spots further away that are available?

A good new years’ resolution comes with a good action plan. So if by now you find that your resolution to be more active has fallen to pieces somewhat, use the list of things above as a starting checklist.

Try and avoid these things for a month and find the opposite, more active alternative to them and make these a habit. Soon enough you will find yourself to be a different, more active person, and you will feel it both inside and out!

Article written by Kevin Su
Diabetes Australia Queensland
www.daq.org.au