OH! Magazine - Australian Version January 2014 (Australian Version) | Página 15

www.getlean.com.au

DR JOANNA
MCMILLAN

“In the bottle before you is a pill, a marvel of modern medicine that will regulate gene transcription throughout your
body, help prevent heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity, and 12 kinds of cancer – plus gallstones and diverticulitis.
Expect the pill to improve your strength and balance as well as your blood lipid profile. Your bones will become
stronger. You’ll grow new capillaries in your heart, your skeletal muscles, and your brain improving blood flow and the
delivery of oxygen and nutrients. Your attention span will increase. If you have arthritis, your symptoms will improve.
The pill will help you regulate your appetite and you’ll probably find you prefer healthier foods. You’ll feel better,
younger even, and you will test younger according to a variety of physiologic measures. Your blood volume will increase
and you will burn fats better. Even your immune system will be stimulated. There is just one catch.There’s no such
pill. The prescription is exercise.”
Jonathan Shaw (2004) Harvard Magazine

This is my all time favourite quote about
exercise. It so beautifully sums up the
benefits and leaves you with no doubt.
Exercise really is an essential part of any
healthy lifestyle. The type of exercise you
do, the intensity and time you spend
doing it may change during your life and
between people, but we all need to move
if we want our body to work optimally.
I get frustrated when I read articles in
the media about how exercise is not good
for weight loss. These non-exercise
advocates argue that we burn relatively
little energy during exercise, or that
exercise ramps up our appetite so that we
are likely to easily compensate for any
extra kilojoules burned by eating more.
This kind of logic drives me crazy and it
belittles the true effect of exercise.
If you work reasonably hard you can
burn between 2,500-3,000kJ in an hour
of sustained exercise. Even if you drop
your intensity and only burn 2,000kJ
that’s still a highly significant amount of
energy. For weight loss we recommend a
kilojoule deficit of around 2,000kJ a day.
So, if you changed nothing about your
eating and added in one hour of exercise,
you’d meet that target and you would

start to burn up fat stores to make up the
deficit in energy.
It is certainly true that we can eat
2,000kJ in just a few minutes. A slice of
banana bread at the cafe as you leave the
gym will do it. So exercise is not a license
to eat what you like! But this is the
mistake many people make. I call it the
‘gym reward syndrome’. Mentally you tell
yourself, well I’ve done my exercise I
deserve to have a little treat. That’s fine
once you are happy that you have
achieved your weight and body fat goals,
but while in an active ‘get lean’ stage, it’s
important you don’t fall into this trap.
The other point is that if you exercise
three times a week, but you still spend
most of every day sitting on your bum,
then it’s really not enough exercise to
achieve a weight loss effect. That said,
your health will benefit in other ways.
And that’s the thing: something is always
better than nothing when you’re talking
about exercise. If you only manage to fit a
15-minute walk in your day, it’s still better
than nothing at all.
 This is the real point of exercise. Read
Jonathon Shaw’s words (above) again. Every
part of what he says is true. You really do get

better at burning fat. You really do grow new
capillaries. You really do boost your immune
function (except if you overtrain) and you
really do deliver more oxygen and nutrients
to your brain, your skin and pretty much
every cell within your body.
To people who tell me they don’t ‘like
exercise for exercise sake’ I say ‘well, sorry
but you have to if you want to be healthy.’
Everyday life for most of us, with the
exception of a few, does not physically
challenge us anymore. Therefore, we need
to and get ourselves moving and override
that ‘lazy gene’ that wants us to sit on the
couch. We need to replicate the walking,
running, jumping, lifting, carrying and
stretching that would have been a
necessity of everyday life for our ancestors.
Even if you lost no weight, being fat
and fit is still better than being lighter on
the scales but metabolically unfit. The
bottom line is: exercise is non-negotiable
for g ood health. Make it regular and be
consistent. It needs to be an important
part of your life, rather than something
you dabble in every now and again. I
promise you, while you may not always
feel like exercising, you will always feel
better after it’s over.

( OH! MAGAZINE ) ISSUE 6

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