The Benefits of Early Exercise
By, Miranda Atkinson, Weight Management Centre
It’s 4 am and I can hear some of my student neighbours returning home from a big night out. They wake me before my alarm goes off with their merriment, and as I drag myself out of bed and force some toast down hastily, it is still pitch black outside.
It was mornings like these when I thought “why am I doing this to myself?” I would meet my university athletics club by 4.30 am so we could drive 2 hours away to run a 10km race. I found the only answer to my question was that I was doing it for the feeling I got afterwards! There was nothing quite like returning to my friends who were just emerging from their slumber and feeling like I had achieved so much while the whole day still lay ahead of me.
I have recently joined the Weight Management Centre and attended a course outlining the problem of childhood obesity and how we can prevent and remedy it. It was truly an eye opener and I had no idea how serious childhood obesity is in the UK, or how frightening the consequences are. I won’t tell you facts and figures – in fact I recommend that you go on the course yourself – but it made me think about my childhood and how lucky I was to have been brought up in an environment which fostered healthy eating, and where exercise was a regular part of our lifestyle.
At my school it was compulsory to participate in one afternoon of sport a week. However, I loved sport and it never occurred to me that the ‘compulsory’ regulation was for students that didn’t want to participate in sport. I had never been on the other side and really couldn’t understand why one wouldn’t want to take part in physical activity. This was in large part due to my parents and the habits that they taught me or, more importantly, the time we all spent exercising together. I came to the realisation that many children simply aren’t exposed to physical activity! They become used to living a sedentary lifestyle and sadly never know if they really have an affinity for a particular sport or physical activity.
I was made aware on the childhood obesity course that we are living in an obesogenic environment, where developments in technology mean that we are not required to do as much physical activity as previous generations in order to complete daily tasks. The availability and demand for convenience food in these busy times, the prevalence of high energy snacks and the general lack of time to exercise, further compound this problem. However, I believe that if all children exercised and were encouraged to some daily physical activity (be it as small as a walk to the park and back), it might give them the opportunity to enjoy and excel at activities they might never have even thought to take part in. As the old saying goes you never know what you like until you try it!