Why Are Some People Physically Active When Others Aren’t?
Being physically active may be the last thing on your mind, especially when you have bills to pay, a demanding job and mouths to feed! But we know being physically active is actually great for us and has many benefits on not only our physical health but our mental health too. So why don’t we all prioritise being active?
Contrary to what people may think, we go through stages of how physically active we are! There are 5 stages we go through on our route to change our health behaviours towards a more active lifestyle. I’ll be using Steve to exemplify what stages we go through and how we people progress through them. Follow Steve’s journey from being a couch potato to an active person. The stages are as follows:
Pre-contemplation - Steve has absolutely no intention on doing any form of physical exercise for the next 6 months, life is good and he likes not sweating and elevating his heart rate!
Contemplation - As you’d imagine, Steve is now starting to think “Maybe I should see what all this exercise fuss is about” and intends to exercise within the next 6 months.
Preparation - Steve now has got a plan together of how he’ll be more active and fully intends to follow it within the next 30 days.
Action - Steve has transformed himself from a couch potato to a gym god! He has devoted effort to exercise and has been doing so for less than 6 months.
Maintenance - This is what separates the active park runners from the New Years resolutioners! Steve has fully committed to exercising and has been active for over 6 months.
Not everyone progresses through each of these stages smoothly, some don’t even make it past the contemplation stage and experience a loop between contemplating and preparing for exercise! What’s more common is the stage of relapse where Steve goes from the action stage, stops exercising and goes back down to the previous stages! Now this is what’s normally seen in people who make New Years resolutions of “I want to lose weight”, “I want to have a 6 pack” and “I want to be more toned".
Why do some people become more consistently active?
So how do people progress through these different stages? There are a number of processes, where people engage in activities that impact what stage they enter. These activities and processes are based on information gathered from the person’s own experiences, environmental events and behaviours that play a role in their physical activity progression. These are a few examples of them:
Consciousness raising - Steve has an increased awareness of the causes, consequences and cures about his health behaviours.
Self-reevaluation - Steve starts to assess his own image and what it would be like if he did engage in being more active.
Stimulus control - Steve removes cues that trigger his unhealthy habits and replaces this with cues that promote more healthy habits. For example, making access to unhealthy foods more difficult and going to see his friends on a football field every Wednesday after work.
Counterconditioning - Steve’s unhealthy behaviours are substituted for healthier ones. For example, instead of driving to the local shop Steve chooses to walk there.
Reinforcement management - Steve designates positive and negative consequences to certain behaviours he engages in. He can either punish himself for engaging in unhealthy behaviours or reward himself for engaging in healthy, active behaviours. It’s better for Steve to manage his behaviour through rewards opposed to punishments. Meaning if you’re looking to be more active, focus on how you’d reward yourself, rather than focusing on punishing yourself when you are not active.
To progress through the stages, you don’t have to go through all these these processes! In some cases, research has found even 2 of these activities can have a large effect on how ready a person is to exercise.
As you’d expect, weighing the pros and cons about being more active plays an important role in whether someone becomes more physically active. This decision making process hits home for a lot of people as it is something we all do. We start to think about the consequences compared to the benefits of exercising. For example, one pro of being more active is a sense of accomplishment and a con is paying a gym membership. Another pro is being able to walk up a flight of stairs without breathing like a pug and a con is having to schedule days where you are physically active. When the pros outweigh the cons, Steve will move further along the stages, but when the cons outweigh the pros, Steve will move down the stages!
The final factor that impacts whether Steve advances along the stages towards being consistently physically active is his level of self-belief. Does Steve believe he is capable of engaging in exercise and forms of physical activity? If he truly believes he’s capable of doing this then he’s likely to adopt the healthy behaviour, but if not, he won’t change his behaviour and go back to the pre-contemplation and contemplation stages. This is why it’s so important for those who are new to being physically active to engage in activities that are within their limits. It’s all good wanting to follow Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s workout plan, but if you don't believe you have the capability and resources to follow it through then you’re less likely to do it. Being physically active doesn't mean going to a gym 5 days a week, it can be as simple as going on a 30 minute walk everyday or playing 5-a-side football with your friends twice a week.
Psychological tip:
If you truly understand that being physically active has much more benefits than costs and you'd like to be more active then write a list of activities that you’d like to do and find genuinely interesting. This can be bouldering, gymnastics, weight training, basketball, etc. Then when you have a list of these things, use the calendar app on your phone or use your diary and schedule when you’re actually able to do it! Don’t force yourself to engage in being active in times that just aren’t possible, but schedule them for times that are possible, like straight after work or weekend afternoons. You’re not superman or wonder-woman, work with what you can do and can commit to!
Article by Edgar Chekera