In September of 2020, my husband and I took a hiking trip to Utah for our 25th anniversary. The main destinations were Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, but we visited lots of other places along the way. It was an amazing trip and taught me a lot about motivation to exercise! So that’s what I want to share with you in this post.
Visiting the Utah parks had been on our bucket list for quite some time but it was also a good choice during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Spending time outdoors made it easier to social distance and get away from people. But we happen to love nature and the fresh air so we would’ve done it either way!
As a personal trainer and health coach, I’m always trying to help people with motivation to exercise and to live healthier lives. That can be hard to do but there are so many ways to make it easier. You just need some strategies and maybe even an attitude adjustment to do it!
So I realized on this trip that just planning a trip like this is one way to motivate yourself and get excited about exercise and health. Instead of experiencing the world through the tv at home, you could be out there yourself! But in order to do that, you have to be in decent shape. There’s your motivation!
But even before that, you have to quit defining yourself by your age. Quit saying things like “I’m too old for that” or “I can’t do that anymore”. Just realize great trips like these are possible with a little work and planning ahead. And it doesn’t matter what your age is!
Why our bodies age earlier than they should
The CDC reported in August of 2019 that “Among U.S. adults aged 40-79, 69% used one or more prescription drugs in the past 30 days, and 22.4% used five or more”. They also said that in this same group “the most commonly used drug types…were antidepressants, lipid-lowering drugs (for high cholesterol), and ACE inhibitors (for high blood pressure and heart problems)”.
In the book “Younger Next Year for Women” Dr. Henry Lodge points out:
“Some 70% of premature death and aging is lifestyle-related. If we had the will to do it, we could eliminate more than half of all disease in women and men over 50. Not delay it, eliminate it.”
This seems like a pretty bold statement, but if you read the research these days it’s pretty clear. Our bodies were never designed for the ease and convenience of modern life. Very little physical activity is required and high-calorie, low-nutrient processed foods are the standard.
Dr. Lodge says that we’re always in a state of either growth or decay. Both the lack of physical activity and good nutrition put our bodies on the path to early decay. Aging, in general, is inevitable, but chronic disease states are not. We’ve just come to accept them as the norm because they’re so common.
For the first time in history, he says “there is enough to eat and no one capable of eating us”. Meaning we no longer have to physically search for food every day and we’re living in a safe, predator-free environment. It’s a pretty easy life…and our bodies don’t understand it! He explains in detail in the book how our bodies react to our sedentary lifestyles.
The only way around the early decay is to fight it. And we do that by choosing more natural foods and purposely working our bodies harder than our modern lives need them to. That way we can live longer, healthier lives that are more enjoyable and fulfilling. Isn’t that good motivation to exercise and take care of yourself?
I would highly recommend reading the book Younger Next Year for Women to help you with that motivation to exercise and eat better! The two authors tell you exactly what to do to slow down the aging process so you can live a better quality of life long into your senior years.
Our perception of aging
As I mentioned, it’s now our perception that chronic disease states in the U.S. are normal and inevitable. But that’s not true. Heart disease is still the number one killer of Americans but according to Heart.org,
“An estimated 80% of cardiovascular disease, including heart disease and stroke, are preventable.”
It’s because so many people get heart disease and die from it that we now accept it as a natural part of aging rather than lifestyle-caused.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the US and many people also wrongly believe it’s also inevitable if we just avoid the other diseases and live long enough. But Lorenzo Cohen, PhD, and Allison Jeffries, MEd point out in their book Anticancer Living that:
“Only 5 to 10 percent of all cancers are caused by inherited genetic mutations. Most experts feel that the number hovers tightly around the 5 percent range.”
This is another great book I would recommend if you’re more interested in how to lower your risk of cancer.
So it’s time we start taking our health and aging into our own hands and do what we can to lower our risk of disease. It’s the everyday choices we make that decide the fate of our current and future health, not simply our genes.
How do we use this information?
What I’m trying to say here is that you’re allowing your age to define you when you just accept that chronic disease states are inevitable. That your fate is out of your hands. Plenty of research shows us that this is untrue. We can all reduce our risk of disease by exercising and eating healthy, natural foods. You’ll also have more energy by doing these things.
In my opinion, the best way to find your motivation to exercise is to make it as fun as possible! That means you need to think outside of the box. Start a walking program, because it’s easy and you can do it anywhere. Then you can elevate that experience by hiking in nature. That makes “walking” more fun and interesting. Take along a camera to focus more on the “fun” of it.
After that, find other fun activities like biking, kayaking, skating, or learning to dance. Anything that sounds enjoyable to you. Too many people make themselves do things they don’t enjoy for exercise hoping that they’ll learn to like it over time. I say start with what you enjoy, and if you’re not sure what that is, keep looking until you find it.
Increasing your motivation to exercise
Once you find something you like to do then see if you can plan trips around that activity in other places. This has really helped me and my husband get more motivation to exercise!
The hiking we do is a great example. We already knew we liked doing it in our own state, so it made sense that it would be even more interesting to see totally different scenery. We’ve now hiked in the Rocky Mountains, in Georgia, Washington, Arizona, Minnesota, Wyoming, Nevada, and Idaho. Each place was unique!
We also enjoy biking around Iowa, so now we take trips with our bikes to ride beautiful trails anywhere we can find them. It’s a nice way to check out a city too. Most cities now have river walks or other paths for the public to use. Some trails cross large portions of a state and go through little towns along the way. It’s a great way to tour an entire area and find unexpected treasures!
Having a goal to strive for always makes it easier to find the motivation to do anything, even exercise. That’s why runners sign themselves up for races. Having a goal makes their exercise more interesting and motivates them to keep going. And the more you train, the easier it is, making it even more enjoyable!
My husband never used to be motivated to exercise until we planned a trip to Peru in 2015 to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. We knew it would be tough hiking 29 miles over 4 days in the Andes Mountains. I read a lot of reviews! So we trained for months leading up to that trip using cardio machines and hiking wherever we could.
We were both proud of ourselves and felt blessed to be in good enough shape to handle the physical challenges of that trip so well. And we got to experience and see things most people will never see up close and personal.
Interesting details of this particular trip
On this September trip to Arches and Canyonlands, the temps were around 100 degrees every day by noon, if not before! So getting up and starting early was a must. But it also meant we got some really great pictures from sunrise and shortly after. Take my advice and don’t sleep in!
We happen to enjoy doing the longer, more challenging hikes in the parks to get to those places you can’t see from a car. But even if you don’t do the long hikes, you still need to be in shape. There are shorter hikes all over that will keep you walking all day long but they’re even ¼ – ½ mile-long many times.
The “trails” in the parks
I really want to tell you about the “trails” we hiked in both parks to give you an idea of the challenge. They were not the paved walkways you expect in some parks.
These trails were marked with small piles of rocks (called cairns) placed every so many yards. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know which way to go! And sometimes you really had to look for those cairns!
Many times those “trails” climbed up over huge boulders that sometimes dropped off sharply at the edges. It was a little scary at times but they had views for miles at the tops that made it worth it.
Then there were deep canyons with red rock walls that soared many stories above us. The views we got to see were so amazing that again, we felt blessed to be able to get to them.
And I think that’s the point of what I’m writing about here. You don’t know what you’re missing if you’re not in shape to get there and see it yourself. So if you need a goal to get working out, then plan a trip to go see some of the beautiful parts of our country.
It takes a lot of strength to see some of these places but you’ll be happy you did! And it will get you excited to visit more places that are off the beaten path. But don’t assume you can handle it without training for it. Many people seem to think that because these are national parks they’re safe and “user-friendly” for everyone.
According to the National Park Service, from 2014-16 there was an “average of about 74 deaths per year” from medical causes in the national parks. About half of those deaths occurred while the person was engaged in some sort of physical activity. And those are just deaths, not injuries or incidences!
Maintain your muscle mass
Most people start losing muscle around the age of 30 at a rate of about 3-8% every decade. But one interesting study of 55-79-year-olds showed that regular lifetime exercisers had not lost any muscle mass or strength. Not only that, but their immune systems had also not aged. Read more details about this amazing study in ScieneDaily.com!
We need to do cardio (getting our heart rates up for an extended period of time) to keep us alive longer. But we need strength training (lifting weights) to keep us independent and strong enough to enjoy life. You just have to find ways to make exercise more fun with activities that get you excited about life! When they’re fun they also don’t seem like exercise.
By the way, housework is NOT “exercise” ladies! I want to be very clear on that point! Housework is movement and moving is always better than sitting. Unfortunately, it doesn’t challenge us enough to strengthen our hearts and muscles. You need more.
Once you take an amazing trip, you kind of get hooked on what the next adventure could be! And you’ll want to keep working out to be able to handle them.
But you don’t have to travel far for adventure. There are beautiful places in your own state to explore if you just look for them. Motivation to exercise can simply come from getting excited about discovering what’s in your own backyard!
My final thoughts
The biggest reason to keep up with some sort of exercise routine is to give yourself a better quality of life. Remember that strength = independence as we’re aging. And independence from relying on pills is also a nice luxury to have!
I understand that many of you may have problems that might prevent you from being as active as you would like, but don’t give up. If you can’t be on your feet then check out mat Pilates. And Yoga is a good low-impact strength and flexibility workout for anyone.
Hiring a personal trainer is a great way to get more personalized help. Sometimes your mind is more limiting than your body. A personal trainer can help you get around your physical limits and teach you new ways to exercise that you hadn’t thought of.
So I encourage you to find your motivation to exercise by planning trips and don’t let age define you! All it takes is to challenge your body every day with a little weight training and aerobic activity. If you can’t do a lot to start just start where you are and work your way up. Anyone can get stronger at any age, it’s never too late.
Just remember that you’ve only got one life to live, so take care of your body to experience it to the fullest!
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