Celeste: Welcome aboard to week four of the Nursing and Midwifery Health Program Victoria's podcast series Wellness Reimagined: How to thrive in stressful times. I'm Celeste Pinney, a Registered Midwife and Senior Clinician at the Nursing and Midwifery Health Program Victoria and host of the podcast, and I'm joined by wellness speaker Mark Bunn, welcome back, Mark.
Mark: Great to be with you, Celeste.
Celeste: Thank you. Our theme today is movement matters. And we intentionally use the word movement instead of exercise, because, ah, especially if you listened in last week, we want to talk more about just moving the body regularly rather than formal exercise. I think we've all heard about the benefits of formal exercise, and probably don't need to, you know, talk too much about that, but yeah, movement matters. Nurses and Midwives probably do understand the importance of exercise and its health benefits, but what often gets in the way people's ability to move more is lack of time, and often lack of energy. Nurses and midwives are frequently tired, often juggling many obligations which interferes with motivation to exercise, and they can feel guilty for not exercising too. For nurses and midwife struggling with fatigue and low energy. Mark, do you have any suggestions on how exercise could be incorporated into their lives?
Mark: I do, and I think that introduction really, really nice, because it touches on a couple of sort of pillars that I think, yeah, this idea of just focusing on activity, not exercise. You know, I think when people think of exercise, drums up all these perceptions of, you know, have to change clothes and put the runners on and go to the gym, and I need 45 minutes, or else it's not going to get a benefit and, and basically that's not the case, and I always come back to the long living cultures and traditional cultures that I've researched, and I'm always I laugh almost. You know, they never go to the gym and don’t do yoga, and they don't get changed five times to get into their exercise. It's part of their life.
And so I was really enjoyed coming across the research about incidental exercise and accumulating activity is most important. And the key to this is that every little bit counts, and so the two minute walk rather than sitting on the chair, the five or 10 minutes at the end of a shift before we go home to do sleep or whatever it is, all add up and are really, really important. The other part, which is a little bit counter intuitive in some ways, but you mentioned the word guilt when we don't exercise as much as we invert a commas ‘think we should’. But I think if we're really fatigued, fatigue, according to the ancient sciences, is a feedback that we need rest. And so it's actually not a time to think we have to go and do the spin class, or, you know, the strength based yoga class. Or if we're really, really tired, then rest is the best thing that we need.
And so being okay that while exercise might be good in a, you know, perfect scenario, rest is more important at that time, once we're rested, then we can come to the exercise. So, yeah, I think, and that just helps get rid of that, that guilt aspect to it. So one of my teachers says, be guilty, but don't feel guilty. It's modern life. We can't do everything. We get bombarded from every direction every day about all the things we should do for our health. We've got to eat these fats and not these fats, and get this amount of sleep and do this much exercise, and it's just impossible. So just giving up trying to do everything being kind to ourselves, and just if we're tired, rest is okay. Once we've had the rest, then we can just get into gentle, gentle exercise is fine.
Celeste: So just basically making the most of it. When you're feeling like you can exercise and you've got the energy, and if not, then you just take the rest.
Mark: Yeah, and just that, that idea of building in little 5 or 10 minutes here or there, you know, again, getting out. I don't have time or energy to exercise because we think it's the 45 minute walk around the Albert Park Lake, or it's the, you know, hour at the gym, or it's whatever it's, but just think, what can I do for 5 minutes here, or 10 minutes here, or even two minutes, you know, little things will really, really help.
Celeste: Better to do something than to sort of give up because you think you haven't got that full hour, or you haven't got the energy to, you know, really smash it out at the gym. Sounds like just, there's all of, like you said, accumulative, all those bits of exercise add up.
Mark: Absolutely.
Celeste: Yeah, great. And I mean, this sort of might relate to what we've just been talking about, did you have any hacks or tips for motivating oneself to exercise? Or maybe that's the wrong question. Should we not be pushing ourselves to exercise if we're feeling unmotivated? But what about the people you know, sometimes we do talk to people who just really don't ever feel motivated to exercise. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that.
Mark: Yes, I think it's a fabulous question, one of my favorite of all time, because it comes back to one of my key principles, and it applies to everything; food, relationships, work, but we have just completely lost sight of the fact that, and I'm going to use the word exercise, but activity, should be enjoyable. I wanted every listener to think of when they're a little boy or girl, four years old, five years old, or children that they have now that haven't got grown up, that they think the iPad and the video games are more fun. But as children, we love to move. It's just, it's fun.
And so what we've missed in this motivation is we think exercise has to be these certain things. I have to go to the gym for an hour, and people feel dread and people looking at them in the mirrors, or they have to go into yoga, and they're not good at yoga, or they… but we don't. All we have to do is move our bodies in ways that we enjoy, and everyone will have at least one or two ways that they enjoy. Gardening is an amazing activity. Your muscles, our muscles don't know the difference between lifting a 20 kilogram wheelbarrow full of soil or bricks, as it does lifting a 20 kilogram barbell at the gym. The heart and lungs don't know the difference between dancing for an hour, ballroom dancing or tango or whatever people are into which they love, heart and lungs and the balance and the coordination. Don't know the difference between lifting weights at a gym. So it's about broadening our appreciation of what activity or exercise can be, and just keep asking that question, how can I move my body in ways that I enjoy?
And there's so many different ways people, some people prefer to swim or water sports. You know, they're just water Babies, anything to do with water. So can you get a paddle board or kayak or just swim, if you hate the water and you're more land based, can you play golf or join a netball group or just get some friends and walk? It's but just, I think broadening that idea and just bringing the fun, fun is the number one way for motivation, because we don't even need motivation when it's fun, we look forward to it, we plan it. And yeah, so take away that idea of exercise has to be a certain thing. And what can I do to that's moving but something I enjoy?
Celeste: Yeah, so not following a prescription, but thinking about what is it that you would really like to do that makes you feel good?
Mark: Yep, beautiful.
Celeste: Fantastic. That's a great suggestion. Many nurses and midwives walk for a large part of their shift on wards, probably racking up a pretty impressive step count. Do you think that's an enough exercise, or are there other forms of exercise that are important to include in one's routine?
Mark: Yeah, it's a little bit like how long's a piece of string? So different nurses, obviously, different roles, nursing home versus hospital ward, I would say, just testing, you know, for the cost of a little watch or a way to monitor your steps, to see if getting up to
Celeste: Pedometer
