Nicolette Horbach, M.D., started working out at a local gym with a personal trainer 4 years ago. She meets with the trainer at 7 a.m. on 2 days during the workweek. “I plan to see patients on those days at 8:45 a.m. instead of at 8 a.m.” said Dr. Horbach, a urogynecologist in private practice in Annandale, Va. “That extra 45 minutes gives me the time to do what I need to do.”
▸ Keep it simple and practical. “You're better off having a treadmill at your house that you can use every morning than you are joining the best club in town if it means you've got to get in a car and drive over there,” Dr. Mitchell said.
At his ob.gyn. group practice in Naperville, Ill., Christopher Olson, M.D., converted a procedure room into an exercise room with a step machine, a stationary bike, and some free weights. Intended for use by his entire staff, the exercise room is where Dr. Olson typically works out during the Chicago winter months, although he prefers outdoor activities like jogging and golf during warmer months. “There's a shower in the office, too, so it makes it harder to come up with excuses” for not using the room, said Dr. Olson.
He added that his office, house, and nearest golf club are within 1.5 miles of each other, “so I can play six holes at dusk and be home for dinner, and it's very convenient,” he said. “To me, one of the secrets to playing hard and working hard is that I try to keep everything very convenient. If it's not convenient, I'm never going to do it.”
If you travel frequently, bring along your running or walking shoes and carve out some time for exercise when you reach your destination. “Running is one of the things that you can do anywhere, so there's no excuse,” Dr. Jackson said. “It doesn't take a lot of time. All you need is a pair of shoes.”
▸ Keep it short. Physicians tend to embrace the notion of “all or none” or “no pain, no gain,” Dr. Mitchell said. “If you could walk 30 minutes in the morning on a treadmill or around the neighborhood at a brisk pace, or if you could jog for 20 minutes, you will get far better benefit doing that than joining a club and going over there once or twice a week and [overdoing] it,” he noted.
▸ Keep it consistent. Schedule each session of preferred physical activity just as you schedule patient appointments and everything else. “Keep a workweek mind-set,” Dr. Mitchell advised. “For example, I went up to Washington a couple weeks ago and we had meetings all day for the president's council. As we were setting meeting times, I said, 'Don't start them before this time, because I'm going to exercise.'”
Planning and Problem Solving Are Key
The skinny on exercise boils down to this:
If you can find time for three 10-minute walks a day, you'll achieve certain health benefits.
“I don't care how busy you are. You can find a way to do that on most days if you do a little planning and problem solving,” said 65-year-old Steven N. Blair, president and CEO of the Cooper Institute in Dallas and primary author of Active Living Every Day: 20 Weeks to Lifelong Vitality (Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics Publishers, 2001).
Mr. Blair has been a daily runner for more than 35 years. Although his habit of being physically active is long established, he still asks himself two questions every evening: “What's my schedule tomorrow?” and “When do I have time to fit in my exercise?”
“I always start with my personal assumption that I'm going to get some exercise tomorrow,” said Mr. Blair. “Exercise is a high priority. I know it's very important to health, so I'm going to find [a way] to do it tomorrow sometime.”
He offered the following hypothetical schedule to illustrate how he would manage to meet his exercise goal despite apparent obstacles.
“Tomorrow I leave the house at 6 a.m. and I'm flying to Seattle to give a presentation,” he said. “I arrive in Seattle at 5 p.m. and my talk is at 6 p.m. It doesn't look like I'll be able to run, but I am changing planes in Denver, and I have an hour and a half layover. I can't run in the Denver airport, but I sure can get a 30-minute walk in.”
Findings from studies conducted at the Cooper Institute have concluded that patients who use such planning and problem-solving techniques are more likely to establish long-term exercise habits than are those who don't. These same patients will also make commitments like, “I vow to be active nearly every day.”