Ep 016 A Realistic Workout Plan for Busy Women and Physical Activity Pyramid
Too busy to work out? You're not alone if you feel this way! Dive into episode 16: "A Realistic Workout Plan for Busy Women."
This conversation demystifies physical activity versus exercise, outlines the CDC's fitness guidelines, and introduces our version of a Physical Activity Pyramid. Discover the crucial roles of flexibility, mobility, and strength training in achieving holistic wellness.
Whether setting beginner fitness goals or seeking consistency in your exercise routine, this episode offers practical, actionable advice to fit exercise into your busy schedule.
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Check out our physical activity pyramid and show transcript below!
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Key Takeaways
Understanding Physical Activity vs. Exercise: the difference between general physical activity and structured exercise, underscoring their combined importance for mental and physical health and pushing back on an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.
CDC Guidelines as a Foundation: The podcast outlines the CDC's recommendations for physical activity, serving as a starting point for listeners to gauge their fitness routines.
The Physical Activity Pyramid: A visual guide introduced to help listeners gradually increase their daily movement, promoting a balanced approach to incorporating fitness into everyday life.
The Importance of Daily Activity, Cardio, Flexibility, Mobility, and Strength Training: The episode stresses the significance of these components in preventing injuries, ensuring healthy aging, and maintaining overall wellness.
Blog & Coaching Resources
The Physical Activity Pyramid
Get Fit with Micro Workouts: Big Gains in Less Time
Top Home Workouts – Efficient Routines + Videos for Fitness Success
Health and Wellness Coaching
Daniel Fast Journey Info
Wholly Well Journey on Instagram
Daniel Fast Journey Book on Amazon
References
Show Transcript
Note: Podcast transcripts are automatically generated and may contain spelling and grammatical errors.
016 A Realistic Workout Plan for Busy Women
Stephanie Hodges: How much exercise do you really need to do to be healthy. And what's a realistic exercise plan for busy women, and this can apply to men too, but when you're juggling a career or family life, or you have young kids, or it's just the daily to-dos and busyness finding time for fitness can be really challenging, but it's not just about finding time.
It's about having the right approach and mindset. There's a difference between exercise and physical activity. And we're going to talk about that. And then we also need to know where are we and where are we trying to go? Talking about your goals and your current physical fitness state, because there's a lot of information out there that can sound really confusing because people are talking about some really specific things when it comes to exercise programming. Well today, we're going to talk about what you can do and how you can do it so that you can be physically fit and healthy.
Welcome to the Wholly Well Journey podcast. I'm your host, Stephanie Hodges. Join us for weekly faith based conversations on holistic health to uncover practical tips for how to thrive and apply biblical wisdom to our busy modern lives. From fitness to food to fasting, we're here to discover what it means to have a healthy spirit, soul, and body.
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Stephanie Hodges: So when it comes to our fitness, I think it's important to clarify what that means.
And we're not just talking about exercising so we can lose weight. We're also talking about the many benefits that physical activity has for our mental health.
It's been shown to mitigate symptoms of depression and many other neurological disorders. It's so important for healthy aging.
And that's from a mental standpoint, it's for preventing cognitive decline. But then also of course, so that you're healthy and strong so that you can do things into old age. So you can continue to live by yourself and, just complete activities of daily living. We don't want to take that for granted. Then there's the fact that so many people, these days are suffering from just chronic pain. And of course overweight and obesity does play a role in this with 70% of Americans being overweight and obese. Yes, that puts a lot of pressure on our joints and also contributes to a lot of other metabolic disorders within the body. We're talking about our internal health here. But either way, what physical fitness does is improve our cardio-respiratory capacity. It helps us to have stamina to do what we need to do in life.
It strengthens our muscles, our bones, and our joints, so that we can live a long and healthy life. And those are things that everybody wants. And sometimes we, are so caught up in the immediate, we think, oh, well, I will start exercising later. I'll do it before I get too old. Or I start to have too many health problems. Well, unfortunately, a lot of times those issues are building over time and they will catch up with you. And so you can't delay or put off starting an exercise program until you think you need it, or until you think you. have more time, because that's not going to come.
But I would say there's three big categories when it comes to talking about our physical fitness. And one level would be people who are trying to maximize performance. This would be athletes or people who are already fit and in shape, but their goal is to run their mile faster. It's there. Max bench press or other types of lifts or it's to really get stronger and put on muscle. And that's a specific group of people who probably have been exercising consistently for many years. And their goals are really pinpointed.
They're really targeted.
Another group would be people who just need more focus and structure in their program. Maybe they're exercising a little bit here and a little bit there, but they don't really feel like they're getting results because their plan is not specific.
It's not tailored. And it's not progressive. We can talk about that a little bit too, but that might be for a future podcast because the group of people that I really want to talk to in this particular episode is those who are having a hard time, just getting a consistent exercise or workout schedule in place. And , if that might be you, it's good to know that in 2020, only 24% of adults over the age of 18 were meeting physical activity guidelines for Americans, for their aerobic and muscle strength activities. Only a quarter.
So that means 75% of people are just not meeting that bare minimum recommendation. And I'm going to tell you real quick, what that is, what we're talking about. The CDCs basic physical activity guidelines are a good starting point. And they say that adults need at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity each week.
Plus muscle strengthening on two or more days a week. So what that breaks down to 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity is 30 minutes a day, five days a week. And a moderate intensity level is just getting the heart rate elevated. It doesn't have to be an all-out sprint, but it needs to be more than just a casual walking from the car to the store.
So the other thing about that though, is that those 30 minutes can be broken up into 10 minute chunks into like micro workouts.
And we have a blog post about that, that we can link to. You can even break that time down, even smaller into 10 minute segments. But that can be challenging for people to do. And to remember, it's often easier for people to just get it done in 30 minutes.
Now, when it comes to the majority of clients I work with as a health and wellness coach. They're not in those phases of trying to maximize their exercise routine. It's actually extremely hard for most people, as busy as they are to commit to this formal exercise on a consistent and weekly basis. But I want to pause here too and talk about something that's really important.
And that's the difference between physical activity and exercise. Physical activity is just that basic activity that happens throughout our day and life. And of course people with manual jobs, that's a lot easier for them to get that in. But over time we have become increasingly sedentary and even worldwide. One study shows that approximately 31% of the global population over age 15. Engages in insufficient physical activity.
And that's a known cause contributing to death. And some reasons for this are lot less. Of course manual labor in our jobs. So many more people have sedentary desk jobs. It's digital work on the computer.
Then there's also been a decrease in leisure time, physical activities.
And of course we see this in our kids, right. Where they used to go outside and ride bikes and play tag with the neighbors. Now they're on video games almost all the time. And I know as a mom, how hard that is and the different factors that you have to navigate with just safety and, the way the world has changed in other respects.
But that fact still remains that starting with children, we are engaging in much less leisure time physical activity.
And then technology has also contributed to. Making things a lot easier. You can have a robot vacuum, but vacuuming is actually a great source of activity and burning calories. And even more. I want to talk about this. Push we have in our modern world to make everything more efficient. And this is where the physical activity really comes into play.
Because a lot of times our mindset has been that we want to make things more efficient and then we're also always busy and always in a rush. And so maybe we decide to pay someone to mow the lawn or to clean the house, or we decide to order something on Amazon and have it delivered. To the door instead of going into the store to go shopping. And while all those things appear to be saving us time.
They also mean that so many of those activities that would be naturally built into our day where we would be walking more and moving more and having a range of movements. Are being cut out of our lifestyle.
And yes, that might save you time in the short-term, but it can really be detrimental in the long-term.
Now, I know that's not necessarily practical for you to ride your bike, to work or completely upend your current lifestyle and your schedule. You've probably come to this place because it's what works for you.
And the truth is you are busy. You do have a lot of things to do. But before we even get into talking about workout programs, let's really think about this fundamental mind shift. That movement is good for us. So how do we move more throughout the day? Exercise is this formal time that we dedicate to getting our heart rate up for a sustained period of time.
That's building our cardio-respiratory endurance. It's building strength through weight training or body weight exercises, or muscular strength training. And then there's also flexibility, mobility and balance, and those types of exercises. And so it is important to be specific about exercising and about pursuing our goals in those areas. But it is equally or maybe more so important that we do shift our minds around trying to move more throughout the day. And a good way to picture this is with a physical activity pyramid. And maybe you remember that food guide pyramid that we had growing up in school. If you grew up in the nineties, but a physical activity pyramid is just a good visual and we have a blog article of one that we've created, and we're going to link to that in the show notes. So I really encourage you to go click on that so you can go see this picture that we're going to be talking about.
Because when it comes to the clients that I'm working with, trying to tell them, Hey, you need to start going to the gym three days a week for 90 minutes. Or even 60 minutes. Or even the idea of doing five days a week of physical activity for 30 minutes. It can be really challenging if that's something they're adding in. To their busy schedule already.
So let's talk about this physical activity pyramid. And how we work our way from being sedentary to not having any workout routine at all, to putting all these building blocks in place that will give us a well-rounded fitness routine. So it starts this level one, this baseline that would be an every day, seven days a week active daily living and walking category. And that's kind of what I was alluding to previously, just about making more choices to get up and move throughout the day.
It's things like walking, the dog, playing with your kids, stretching, cleaning the house. Little things that you do while you're working, where maybe you get a standing desk or you stand up frequently, you set an alarm to make sure that you're not spending too much extended time sitting. It could be that you're pacing and walking back and forth.
When you're on a phone call, just simply that you're moving more. And when you have the choice to sit on the couch and watch TV, or do something sedentary or go outside and play in the backyard with the kids, you're going to choose that physical activity. And I also include walking in this category because especially for most Americans, walking is not something that's naturally built into your day.
In most cases, not all cases, it's often something that we're having to do consciously. And I'm sure you've heard that advice before that you should park in the back of the parking lot to walk further into the store. Well, that's good if you're doing errands every day, but a lot of people aren't, some people are even working from home or they're going. Straight to get in their car in the garage and drive directly to the office. But walking is something that we can measure because just telling people, Hey, you should be more active every day.
That's a little bit ambiguous and vague. How do you know if you're really doing more activity? And one way could be just having certain amounts of time that you dedicate to cleaning or to being outside. But one of the, really the easiest ways to see how active am I being just as a general baseline everyday is by counting your steps.
And you can do that through a smartwatch or a simple pedometer, and they have some very inexpensive watches that will count your steps for you. And you may have heard the number 10 K a day. That's taking 10,000 steps a day and that that's a good target to aim for. And it is, but it's also been shown that that was actually a little bit arbitrary, how that was established.
And so. The best way to get started is to simply measure your baseline, how many steps on average over the course of a week, are you taking because yes, it's true too. Some days are very different than others. Your weekdays may look different from your weekends, and it's not necessarily about getting the exact same number every day, but over the course of the week, what is your average? And then trying to increase that from there.
And it could be that you're starting out just 3000 steps a day on average, and you want to go to 3,500 and then each week you're trying to increase that number slightly. And 10,000 steps for most people. That's about four to five miles.
And so if your preferred formal exercise is walking or elliptical. And that's counting as your steps and it's measuring that activity as your steps, then that's great. And if you're someone that likes to ride the bike all the time or row, or do something else where steps aren't counting, well, you can take that into account, but again, we're not getting into splitting hairs at this stage of the game.
We're just trying to take some simple steps that will help you to incorporate more physical fitness in your daily life. So increasing your step count, limiting the sedentary activities, choosing to take part in leisure activities that are going to help you move. Those are all things that you want to be doing every. A single day to ensure that you're just moving more.
One more note . And you might've heard about this study, this research study that was done in 2007. Where they measured the relationship between exercise and health and mindset. In 84 female room attendants who were working in hotels. And half of this group was told that the work that they do on a daily basis, which was cleaning the hotel rooms was good exercise and satisfied.
The surgeon General's recommendations for an active lifestyle. And then there was a control group that wasn't given this information. And so all of these ladies ended up doing the same job , but four weeks into it, the group that had been told that they were satisfying, those physical activity recommendations. It turns out that they had a decrease in weight. Blood pressure, body fat waist to hip ratio and body mass index compared to the other group. So when you think about some of these chores that you have to do throughout the day or some of these errands or things that might be taking up more time, Just having the mindset around it that, Hey, no, I don't love to clean the house, but it is good for me.
It's giving me some activity in my day and I keep using the example of cleaning the house. There could be many other examples out there to get creative. Think about what you like to do, what you need to do and what you have to do. And then simply by changing your mindset around that can have a tremendous impact on your physical health.
The second tier in this physical activity, period is flexibility and mobility.
And the reason why this is so important, although it sounds a little bit boring and it sounds easy to skip. Is that so many people suffer from chronic pain and injuries. I've heard it estimated that 80% of people will have back pain at some point within their lives.
And there was also a report from the CDC showing that during 2021, an estimated 20.9% of adults experienced chronic pain. And that's a serious condition and a serious measurement of people who are dealing with pain could be from a variety of other health conditions that they're experiencing.
But then there's also just the day-to-day aches and pains that so many people experience from sitting so much. Affects the back affects the hips. Weakens the glutes. And then of course, there's the tech neck that people are getting from being on their phones. And so this idea of flexibility and mobility and balance is that all of your joints would be working through normal range of motion. That you would have balanced in strength, and that you would be able to be mobile and have functional fitness as you age.
So you're able to do the things that you need to do to live on your own. And also if you fall, you can get back up again and you just having this balance in your life. And so it's something we do typically think of as related to longevity and related to aging, but it's actually a factor at a younger and younger age. And so on one level, it's just preserving our movement. It's reducing our pain, but then it's also about preventing injury, because if you go from a sedentary lifestyle to jumping straight into hit classes or CrossFit classes, five times a week, or. Running. And then you get hurt and then you get injured. Then you're just put right back at square one. And so again, I know it might not be the sexiest thing in the world, but making sure that you're doing proper exercises to align yourself doing proper stretches, to put balance into all your muscles is really super important for the long haul, because you're going to be much more effective in the long run if you're not getting those overuse injuries. And you're not negatively impacting your joints. And so this requires a little bit of research to learn how to make sure that you are doing exercises in the proper way.
And I'm also putting this at a lower point on this physical activity pyramid, because if you have gotten injured, it's likely that you've gone to a doctor or a physical therapist, and they've given you certain exercises to do things like band work or stretches or back exercises. And it's so important that you continue to do those things too. Make sure that those issues are fully resolved or that they don't happen again.
And this mobility flexibility section is low on the pyramid not necessarily because it takes a lot of time, but because it should be done frequently, it should be every day. , concern of ours to make sure that we're doing our stretches after our workouts and making time for that, not just rushing onto the next thing, which I'm so guilty of doing myself. Or it could be just simple stretches and balance exercises that you do.
First thing in the morning when you wake up to get the blood flowing or last thing before you go to bed at night. Another way of looking at this and to make it more formal as to do activities like yoga or Pilates. Or it's so easy to get on YouTube and look up. Uh, five minute daily stretch routine for the morning, for the evening, or for whatever particular issue might be for back health.
For neck health, you can easily find these quick and very easy and accessible routines. So make sure you're taking that time to just set a strong and healthy baseline for what you do.
Then we're going to move on and up to your cardio-respiratory activity, your cardio, and this is what most people think of.
When they think about exercising, they think about swim, bike, or run, uh, getting on a cardio machine at the gym. And yes, this is super important for our heart and lung function. And for just helping our body overall and in a practical level, making sure that you have stamina and endurance to do the other things you want to do in life without getting winded, going up the stairs, or maybe it's a vacation you want to take. And this is the basic CDC guidelines that we talked about.
That's 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity physical activity. Or 75 minutes a week of vigorous intensity physical activity, or it can be a combination of both. For a while high intensity interval training or hit training became extremely popular and that would be the vigorous intensity physical activity. And there were a lot of studies that showed that in these 20 minutes, high intensity workouts. You could get. Great results. In a very short amount of time. And while that's true, it's not necessarily the best path for people who are starting from a place of being sedentary. In that case, it's much better that she would build up your baseline with moderate intensity activity. And then the other thing is if it's only vigorous activity all the time, you have a much higher risk of getting injured.
So most people will find that a combination of both is the best route forward and it's become pretty popular recently to talk about zone two cardio. A lot of the podcasters and lifestyle experts are talking about the zone two activity. And zone two is referring to your heart rate. It's basically a 60 to 70% of your heart rate max. And these activities would include things like brisk walking, jogging, swimming, and cycling, doing elliptical or other machines at the gym. At an intensity to which you're able to talk, but not talk extremely comfortable.
So some experts recommend getting even up to 200 minutes of zone two cardio a week. That may sound like a lot, but it's really just 40 minutes, five days a week. It's upping that minimum requirement to 40 minutes of steady state endurance training again, that you can sustain for a longer period of time.
Now you can also, again, break it up into multiple sessions throughout the day. But it's something that you need to build up to. And so starting from that baseline again of 30 minutes, five days a week is a good place to start.
And some people don't have time to go to the gym. So they need an option at home. Well, if you have a bike, you could go bike riding. Of course there's always walking and jogging. Those are great, but you can also find so many YouTube videos. I know I said that about mobility, but it's true.
You can find these at home cardio workouts and strength workouts.
The other thing is, if you just don't feel like you have a lot of time to work out and part of that being because you don't have time to drive 15 minutes to the gym, do your workout, and then have to shower and change afterwards. That's where an activity like walking just can't be beat because a lot of times you can do that. Without getting to the point that you're so sweaty, you need a shower, you can just bring extra shoes to work and go during your lunch break.
It's one of the most adaptable, versatile and great forms of exercise that you can do throughout your life.
So, yes, we could talk in a little bit more detail about this aerobic versus anaerobic training and that's the moderate versus vigorous intensity training and the different protocols that have been studied for that. But that comes down the road. Don't overthink it in the beginning. Just make sure that you're establishing a habit that's consistent.
So this final segment of our physical activity, pyramid is strength training. And strength training. Honestly, isn't something that I love to do. But it is so incredibly important. It can't be missed and it's very important for healthy aging. It's very important for weight loss. Not because you're going to be burning so many calories through weightlifting that it's going to cause you to immediately lose weight, but because it improves your body composition. And a big problem with so many people who go on yo-yo diets on again, off again, diets is that when they're restricting their calories and they're losing a lot of weight, they're usually losing fat and muscle. Then when they're done with that diet and they start going back to normal eating patterns and regaining that weight. They're not regaining equal amounts of fat and muscle they're regaining fat.
And so that's where people can get any harder and harder cycle over time of weight loss, and then regain.
On the flip side, you can do yourself so much good. When it comes to weight loss and body composition. By lifting weights and by building muscle. And I know that sounds scary because building muscle for women makes you think, oh my gosh, I'm going to get bulky. I'm going to get big. I'm going to get heavy, but that is really not the case.
It's really not possible for women to get big and bulky and build a ton of muscle without really extreme effort of extended periods of weightlifting. And then also eating a lot of protein and just a lot of calories in general. So don't be afraid that you're just going to wake up and accidentally gain a bunch of weight.
Now I don't want to get on too far of a tangent about weight loss and body composition, I just want you to know that it really is a positive side effect of strength training. And it's a great mental boost. People who lift weights, male or female gain so much confidence in being stronger.
And so I really want to encourage you through this whole conversation about physical fitness, to not just be focused on weight loss, because exercise, is it punishment for eating and it's not the sole goal of just simply trying to lose weight. It really is a lifestyle habit that impacts you from a physical and mental and emotional health standpoint so much for the better.
Okay. So back to strength training, we want to train all the major muscle groups of the body. And those CDC recommendations were to train. At least two times a week, but you can split this up in different ways. You can do certain body parts on certain days you can do a total body strength training routine two or three days a week. Where you can do like an upper body and lower body split and do that four times a week.
So two days a week, your training, your upper body, and two days a week, your training, your lower body. And there's way more routines than this, you can do push poll muscle groups and. Uh, it doesn't really matter how you split it up just that you're giving appropriate load to your muscles with an appropriate frequency. And so two times a week is a good baseline.
It's a good place to start. Conventional advice is you want to wait 48 hours in between working the same muscle group that's every other day. And so that's because your muscles are really repairing and growing stronger. When you rest. It's not when you're working out, you're actually breaking down those muscles. But then in the rest periods, in between, they're able to repair and grow stronger.
So you really want to focus on that rest. When you're just starting out, it may be that you start with one set per muscle group and you can do a very quick workout and still see results for that in the beginning. But an important principle for strength training is progressive overload. That means you're continuing to challenge those muscles over time. So, if you start with doing one set of body weight exercises, that means after a couple of weeks, you're going to two sets of those body weight exercises, then three sets of each exercise. Then you're adding dumbbells and you're not this ladies are especially guilty of this.
You're not just going to stick with five pound dumbbells forever. You're going to be slowly increasing those weights over time. And then you're going to be incorporating more variety of exercises. That's how you're progressing and you're continuing to challenge your body. So you'll continue to see results.
But again, in the beginning, whether it's the cardio or whether it's the strength. Consistency is most important. And so find things that you can do that you enjoy doing, hopefully, but even if you don't enjoy them, that you're willing to commit to. And you have to make that decision when it comes to physical fitness and it comes to this type of exercise. That you're not going to overthink it.
When it comes time to do your exercise, you're going to have to look at your calendar, look at your schedule plan, what time makes sense. And then when that time comes around, It's not a conversation of, oh, do I really feel like getting out of bed to work out or do I really feel like going to the gym after work? You have to just do it. And that's where it can be more helpful when the consistency factor comes in to be doing the same thing maybe every day.
And you might not be doing the same type of workout every day. You might have some days that are more of a rest and recovery day where you do just a really light walk or you do some of that. Stretching and flexibility work. But doing something every day at the same time, or at least five days a week at the same time can really help you to be more consistent. You're taking that mental mind game out of it.
So let's sum it up. The title of this podcast was a workout plan for busy women. And there were these four components that we talked about within it. One is simply to be more active every day to set yourself a goal of increasing your steps. Maybe that's where you start. Maybe that's what you need to do for the next month is to just focus on being more active every day. And then alongside that, working on your mobility and your flexibility and your balance.
Making sure that you're bringing balance to your body from a posture and alignment standpoint. Then you want to work on getting that consistent aerobic activity that cardio-respiratory endurance. And then finally last but not least. In fact, I would say it's most important. It's not less important than your cardio would be your strength training. Start with two days a week.
If that's all you have and then see where you go from here,
if you can set aside for yourself. Five days a week for 30 minutes of cardio. And then add 15 to 30 minutes on two of those days for strength training.
That's an effective workout routine. It doesn't have to be an hour a day and remember that it doesn't have to be going to the gym. A lot of times, the amount of time that we have to invest in workouts is getting back and forth. And if you love classes, if you love the gym environment, by all means, do it, it'll help you be more consistent. But if that's something that you don't feel like you have time for. Start with things that you can do at home. So I would love to talk to you more about physical fitness, more about your individual and personal goals. And we can do that on a discovery call.
So head to Stephanie C. Hodges dot com. And you'll find the tab there to book yourself a discovery call. So we can talk more about how to get you a regular workout routine that works for your life.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Wholly Well Journey podcast. Please be sure to subscribe and you can also head over to whollywelljourney. com to check out the show notes and the whole podcast library. That's also where you'll find information about our health and wellness coaching, which you can participate in online from wherever you are in the world.
Just a reminder and disclaimer that this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for medical advice or professional counseling. Please be sure to consult your doctor before making any changes to your diet or exercise plan Thanks for joining us on this journey to becoming wholly well.
