Let Little Successes Count

For this week’s #ThinnerThursday post, I had planned to write up some tips for maximizing the benefits of diary-keeping, but I’ve decided to put that off a week, because I think you need to see this:

15 minutes of exercise a day can extend life by three years.

Super-quick summary: A new study published Tuesday in The Lancet shows that just 15 minutes of moderate exercise each day (think brisk walking, not P90x) increased longevity by an average of 3 years and decreased risk of death from cancer by 10%. And this was no small study. The researchers tracked more than 416,000 participants (men, women, young, old, healthy, not-so-healthy, smokers and non) for 13 years. These findings apply to all of us.

That’s right. Even a few minutes of exercise can change your life. And mine.

(This is especially welcome news at my house because 15 minutes is close to my 16-month-old daughter’s threshold for watching mommy exercise. After that, she melts down and I can’t focus.)

Although the health implications are important to me, I want you to focus on the psychological meaning of these results. Here’s why.

Many of us have internalized the standard fitness advice that requires 40 minutes of moderate exercise 5 or 6 days a week, and we beat ourselves up for anything less than that. We don’t start a workout if we know we won’t “finish” it. We discount our best efforts because they fall short of our goals or because they’re less intense than other people’s workouts. We don’t let a short walk “count.”

The results of this study tell us that 15 minutes counts.

10 minutes counts.

Even 5 minutes of exercise counts.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you must make revolutionary changes in behavior to achieve revolutionary results. Tiny tweaks can pay big dividends, if you continue to make small refinements over time. This is the central idea in Kaizen, a Japanese business process of continual, incremental improvement that is only now being applied to individual behavior change. (You can learn more about this by reading One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. I found it really changed by thoughts about change.)

Interested in a Kaizen-inspired fitness program? Check out the No Excuses Workout system and sign up for the free daily fitness tips. As the fitness coach for FlyLady, Jonathan Roche takes her gentle approach to improvement:

“You’re not behind — You are just getting started.”

Based on this study, I’m giving myself an “A” for this week. How about you?

Weighing in for Thinner Thursday: 132.4 lbs