Consistency over intensity is a motto I try and instil in my patients, and indeed myself. What do I mean by this? Changing behaviours to be more health focused is hard. If it were easy, two thirds of the population wouldn’t be overweight. Improving fitness (and we can debate how we measure that) is the single biggest thing that will help us live longer and better quality lives.
I get asked all the time what is the best exercise, how much should I do and so on. The answer will be different for different people, but the key point is that it should be ideally enjoyable, but as a minimum, not awful for the person. I would much rather someone did 20 minutes of gardening twice a week, than going for a jog once a month for example. The benefits of ‘little and often’ compound over time, and getting injured becomes much less likely. Injuries and the resulting breaks from exercise in the over 50s are really important – you never quite seem to get back to where you were, and the scientific studies confirm this.
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