What keeps us at it?
Judy CLARK was tired of feeling sluggish. She had put on a few pounds too. However, it was her mother’s memory that finally pushed the secretary from Studio City through the door of the Ketchum Downtown YMCA one day in 1998.
Clark recalled that her mother -- who suffered a stroke at age 51 and a second, fatal stroke at 66 -- had led a sedentary life. “I was basically a non-exerciser,” said Clark, now 52. “I had started thinking about my family history and the fact that I wasn’t taking care of myself.”
Instead of going out to lunch that afternoon, Clark signed up at the Y. Six years later, she is at the facility several days a week, alternating between aerobics classes and spinning sessions, and working out with weights. Getting regular exercise, she said, “became part of my life.”
Many behavioral psychologists would like to know: What’s her secret? How do the Judy Clarks of the world maintain a commitment to exercise while so many of us allow good intentions to crumble as we find our way back to the sofa? Studies show that up to 60% of people who adopt new exercise regimens abandon their plans within six months. Researchers are applying psychological theories about human motivation to design exercise plans that will keep people on their feet.
With rising obesity rates and mounting evidence that a sedentary lifestyle can lead to early death, finding ways to increase and maintain interest in exercise in this country has never seemed more timely. In December, for example, the New England Journal of Medicine published a Harvard study that followed more than 115,000 women for 24 years. During that time, obese women who got little exercise were 2.5 times more likely to die than physically active lean women.
Unfortunately, 55% of Americans don’t get the recommended amount of physical activity (30 minutes of moderate exercise at least five days a week or 20 minutes of vigorous exercise at least three times a week), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Studies of twins suggest that whether a person exercises regularly or slacks off is influenced in roughly equal parts by genetics, social environment and physical environment, said Rod Dishman, co-director of the exercise psychology laboratory at the University of Georgia. But that doesn’t mean being a sofa-surfer is one’s destiny, Dishman said. “A large part of being physically active,” he said, “is a personal decision.”
So why do some people decide to get off that sofa and work up a sweat? There is surprisingly little scholarly research on the question, but surveys provide some clues. In several recent surveys, a minority of respondents said they started exercising to prevent disease. The prime motivation cited by sedentary people who started working out regularly is simply to slim down. For instance, a 2002 AARP survey of 2,000 Americans older than 50 found that the most common reason given for starting an exercise regimen was the desire to lose weight. A recent online poll by the American Council on Fitness found weight loss to be the top motivator too.
In recent years researchers have focused on finding ways to keep people from quitting exercise programs. For instance, psychologist Bess H. Marcus, director of physical activity research at Brown University Medical School in Providence, R.I., devised a five-stage “motivational readiness” scale based on the work of psychologists James O. Prochaska and Carlo C. DiClemente, who created the so-called transtheoretical model to describe how people become motivated to change behaviors. At the bottom of Marcus’ scale are people who aren’t even thinking about exercise; at the top are super-dedicated gym rats who would rather miss a dinner than a session on the treadmill.
Marcus believes that recognizing or her own stage of readiness can help a person establish realistic goals, which she and other experts believe is an essential part of maintaining motivation. For instance, leaping from just thinking about starting an exercise regimen (stage two) to working out vigorously most days of the week (stage four) could result in frustration and even injury.
“That’s a depressing and demoralizing experience,” said Marcus, one that could cause you to give up. In a 1998 study published in the American Journal of Health Promotion, Marcus showed that people who adopted an exercise regimen tailored to their stage of motivational readiness exercised significantly more and were less likely to quit exercising after three months than a comparison group given a standard fitness plan.
Setting realistic goals is one of many important “self-management/self-regulatory skills” that influence motivation to stick with an exercise plan, said psychologist James Annesi of the Metropolitan Atlanta YMCA. “We can measure people on their propensity to drop out,” he said. Most fitness trainers create workout regimens for newcomers that are based on the assumption that attaining long-term goals for weight loss or muscle building will keep clients coming back, said Annesi.
But that approach, he said, works for a “minuscule” percentage of people who embark on new workout plans. Annesi’s Resources for Exercise Maintenance Scale provides a way for trainers to ask newcomers a series of questions, then use their answers to create a workout regimen they are less likely to abandon.
“We’re not so concerned with people reaching their long-term goals,” said Annesi. “Our single-minded focus is building the exercise habit.”
Annesi’s test is administered as part of a program he created called Coach Approach, which has been implemented at YMCAs in 13 cities across the country, including the Ketchum Downtown branch in Los Angeles.
