Let’s move on to some societal misconceptions. There is often the assumption or common belief that thin people are fit and people in curvy bodies are unfit. We know this isn’t true and you might be able to think of examples of people who have smaller bodies, who have unhealthy habits or curvy bodies who are regularly taking part in exercise. We believe you can work on improving your fitness at any size. But don’t just take our word for it.

Here are some other people on social media that recognize fitness is not all about body size and shape. We also want to recognize and have been there too that thinking about doing exercise can bring up unhappy memories and experiences which can often put us off.

For instance, I remember being made to wear horrible pain knickers at school and this really put me off doing exercise for a long time. Even when I left school. I wonder if this or something similar to this is something you recognize. Before we start to explore what activity may be helpful for you, we want to clear up a bit of terminology.

What is exercise?

You’ve been using this term all the way through this video so far. Exercise actually comes under an umbrella term of physical activity. Physical activity is any movement of the body produced by muscles that requires energy. This includes everyday activities and chores, perhaps even occupational tasks. Physical leisure activities such as walking the dog and of course, exercise, which tends to be structured and done at specific places and times.

We think it is important to use the term physical activity rather than exercise because we recognize for some people doing structured timed activities might be difficult. For example, perhaps the only capacity you’d have to move your body is part of a daily chore or through your occupation. We think using terms such as physical activity or just movement can help us to think a little broader about how we can keep our bodies moving.

We just want you to start thinking about how you can incorporate any physical activity or movement into your life so that it helps you to live the life that you want. As the environment around us has changed. We no longer need to hunt for food, for instance, and society has progressed. There started to be other reasons. We moved our bodies 50 to 70 years ago. We probably worked in more manual type industries and were probably local to where we lived, so we probably walked as part of our commute. So many more jobs now.

A desk based even on chores have become less manual. Although I am glad I have a washing machine and a scrubbing board to wash my clothes on. Now a hobbies are much more likely to have screens involved in them. Think Netflix and gaming and social networking. In our modern societies, although we seem busy, we are a lot more sedentary than we have ever been.

Of course, there is also personal safety to think about, and sometimes the environment we live in doesn’t feel safe to walk around in or exercise in. Especially if you’re female at night. Now we just spend so much of our lives not having to move much tended to spend a lot of our time sitting. Perhaps now we have to find other ways and reasons to move our bodies.