Of all the relationships that have been completely confused since the beginning of the pandemic, the most amazing one may be the relationship with our own body. According to an observational study in 2020, the majority of people who can work in remote areas have done so for most of the last two years, reducing the average daily steps of Americans by 20%. Lack of commuting (even for car commuters, walking from the parking lot is more steps than rolling from bed to kitchen table). The plunge in physical activity has led many of us to consider exercise as an integral part of our lives, rather than as a terrifying addition to our busy schedule.
As a larger woman, Philadelphia-based HR expert Emily Kuykendall suffered from the fact that exercise is often assembled as a way to change her body, so she never intentionally exercises once. I told me it wasn’t there either. She took a day off for a walk on the vast campus of her work during the lunch break, which was a range of physical exercise. Later, when she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and office life moved to the screen as she shortened her social distance, she became even more sedentary.That confluence of the event gave her the opportunity to think how When why She wanted to exercise, and what can it do for her health? For the first time in her life, 27-year-old Kuykendall began to consider her intentional movements to be the basis of health, not weight loss, she said.
The people I spoke to agreed that the pandemic helped change their relationship with the movement. Kuykendall started taking a walk in Zoom and taking yoga classes. The more she moved, the more she wanted to move. She told me to start by asking herself.What do you want to do Want to go for a walk? Do you dance to the music for 5 minutes? stretch? nap? All of them take care of my body and now I’m listening to what it especially wants. Mental reframing that all kinds of activities (for example, not just intense aerobic exercise) can bring health benefits is one of the positive consequences of working from home, Says Marissa Goldberg, who consults with companies about the best way to implement remote work for employees. Pre-pandemic people may have thought that they had limited opportunities to put the exercise into the day. But when work went online for many, that is, when gyms across the country were closed, the options for what we perceived as an exercise expanded. On her side, Goldberg sets a 30-minute timer every day to clean, complete a to-do list, take a walk at noon to clean her head, and tune in to the music. I dance.
Getting Americans to exercise in general has been a challenge for decades. “We only have enough time, energy, or attention to pursue so many goals at once,” said David Conroy, a professor of kinematics and human development at Pennsylvania State University. Told to. “And physical activity, rewards are often so delayed that many people do not value them as much as some of the other consequences that would occur if we pursued other goals.” The change in perception that leads to a little movement every day is still a victory. If working from home is seen as an opportunity to shape the day to your liking, Goldberg told me, it could actually lead to a physically healthy self.
In her book Don’t Sweat: How A Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring You A Life Of FitnessMichelle Segar, a health coach and scientist who studies health behaviors, said keeping people physically active is “a way to choose and enjoy almost all kinds of everyday movements as long as you feel better. To understand. ” When people realize that daily walks feel good and satisfying, they are much more likely to choose to continue and may even look for more movements. Attempting to stick to the gym routine you are afraid of because you are “assumed” or want to lose weight will most likely have immediate or lasting consequences for most Americans. There is no such thing. As a result, many exercise goals are easily abandoned.
Smartwatches, whose sales surged during a pandemic, have played a role in rethinking the movement by rewarding people for fast-moving things. For example, Fitbit helps spread your goal of 10,000 steps per day and notifies you if you haven’t walked at least 250 steps an hour. Apple Watch also records whether you “closed three rings” daily by achieving specific calorie burn goals, step count goals, and standing time goals. These are the kind of small achievements that Los Angeles 28-year-old voice actor Eli Diaz had to accept. She was exercising regularly, biking and walking her wife to work miles away. But she said in her email that she felt “she is incredibly sedentary” for the past two years. This shocked the system a bit. In her most desperate state, Diaz relied on a swift loop around the sofa in her living room during the day. She said she wasn’t always able to exercise as she was before the pandemic because her immunity is weak and COVID-19 is a constant risk. But she now considers all her moves worthwhile. “At this point, I am totally grateful to be able to exercise.”
Working from home stays here for at least some of us, and this idea of exercise may continue beyond the present moment. After all, working from home in the pandemic era wasn’t “normal” working from home, and many of the people she talked to felt depressed and lethargic, Goldberg said. She tends to encourage clients to start tracking their movements. That way, when she doesn’t stand up for hours or walk more than a few hundred steps a day, it’s likely that it’s part of her mood. In this way, remote work can begin the process of discovering how important the movement really is and how you want to address that need. “Being in your own environment saves a lot of emotional, mental and physical energy,” she said. “It’s like finding yourself again.” Perhaps now we can collectively redefine what counts as an exercise. Part of our life continues to be mediated through the screen, so intentionally moving our body helps to remind us that we have it.
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