Please Don’t Exercise!

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Some people love to exercise. They love waking at dawn, tying on their trainers and hitting the pavement as the sun peaks out over the horizon. Or they love pushing themselves to their limit, sweating their way to a shapely body. Or they love spending hours on the tennis court, or the basketball court or they can’t get enough of a rapid-fire Zumba class.

Then there’s the rest of us.

The thought of exercise makes us cringe. We’d do almost anything to avoid it. Exercise is punishment, for eating and/or drinking too much, for not weighing what we think we should weigh, for misbehaving around food and it’s punishment for not exercising.

If that sounds familiar, here’s a great reason why you shouldn’t exercise. If you view exercise as punishment, you’re not getting all the benefits that come from exercise. If you force yourself to exercise when you hate it, your body will be in a physiological stress response. That will decrease your body’s ability to burn fat. So by punishing yourself with exercise, you’re actually further away from your goal.

So what’s the alternative? Start moving your body. Don’t think about calories burned. Don’t think about keeping track of steps or reps or any of that exercise talk. Just move your body in a way that feels good and comfortable for you.

Think of moving your body as a way to nurture (NOT punish) yourself. Talk a walk. Find a 5 minute beginner’s qi gong video on YouTube. Get into the water where weight-bearing movements are about 1000% easier. Download an app on your smart phone or desktop that alerts you to stand up every 30-45 minutes while you’re working. Learn three good stretches you can do anywhere. Dance with one song on the radio. If standing is hard for you at this stage, look for a short video on chair yoga.

It doesn’t matter what you do. It only matters THAT you do. Give your body the love that comes with movement. Don’t hurt yourself. Don’t stress yourself. Learn to associate movement with pleasure, not pain. Stop thinking of moving your body as something you need to do to lose weight and start thinking of it as something you want to do to give yourself pleasure today, to start feeling better, more fluid, more flexible, right now.

Any kind of movement is a perfect companion to the Spatz3 adjustable gastric balloon. And as you lose weight, you’ll be increasingly able to find more pleasure on moving your body.

Author: Rebeca Espinoza

Rebeca Espinoza writes about health, fitness and weight loss for Spatz Medical, makers of the Spatz3 Adjustable Gastric Balloon. You can find her on or at [email protected].

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