It’s not just how much exercise you do but how you compare yourself with your friends that really determines your fitness.
If your New Year’s exercise regime has already failed, try not to focus on all the workouts you should have done. New research has revealed a surprising connection between people’s beliefs and their health: by being too negative about their physical activity, some people may “think themselves unfit”.
Scientists at Stanford University in the US looked at mortality data for 61,000 adults. For 21 years, dozens of measures were taken, including how much people exercised and crucially, how much exercise they thought they did compared with others their age, during which time some of the participants had died from a range of illnesses.
Analysing the various factors that might have contributed to the participants’ health, the researchers discovered something extraordinary. People who thought they weren’t doing as much exercise as their peers died younger than those who thought they did more, even when the actual amount of exercise they did was the same.
This effect remained even when they took into account the participants’ health status and factors such as smoking.
Exercise does of course add to your average life expectancy, but this study suggests that perceptions of exercise make a difference too.
why our perceptions of exercise could affect our health?
The first is simply that we feel stressed if we think we’re not active enough. Bombarded by health messages and seeing everyone exercising all the time, might cause us to worry a lot and this kind of chronic stress could damage our health.
Or is it down to motivation? Perhaps if you already think you’re active your image of yourself as an athletic person encourages you to do even more exercise to fit in with this image.
