Exercising with Osteoarthritis: Staying Motivated and Reaping the Benefits
Exercising with osteoarthritis: staying motivated
Lucinda Moody, exercise physiologist
Sometimes it's hard to be motivated to exercise, here are some things that that can help you. So, if you can talk to other people that have been through a similar experience and see that they've lost weight or they've improved their quality of life that's a real motivating factor for you to know that you can do this. Finding something that you really love to do for your osteoarthritis, something that you really enjoy whether you love the water or you love to go out walking or just do some gentle strength training, it needs to be something that you're going to enjoy initially so you can sustain in that physical activity long term so something that makes you smile and that you can have a lot of fun while you're doing it as well.
Kim Bennell, physiotherapist
Some people say that the exercises are boring or can get boring over a period of time and it's important to look at ways to vary the exercise program. So, you don't need to do the same thing day in day out the exercises can be changed they can be varied doing them in a group setting with others can be really helpful or doing them while you're watching the television or having some music on can help with that as well.
Lucinda Moody, exercise physiologist
It's important as a motivating factor to give yourself reward so if you achieve your fitness and health goals it might be to lose 5 kilos in five weeks, it's important to reward yourself and say okay I'm going to buy myself a new outfit or I'm going to go and have a healthy lunch somewhere or spend some time at the movie so by giving yourself rewards and kind of self-affirmations that I have done this that is a great way to keep yourself motivated you can see where you're going and you can see your goals that you that you set and where you're aiming where you're headed.
Benefits of exercise
Kim Bennell, physiotherapist
The research shows that exercise is beneficial for pain function as well as improving quality of life and the benefits that you get from exercise are actually comparable to those benefits that you can get from common drug therapies for osteoarthritis, but the advantage of exercise is that it has much fewer side effects. Also, it helps improve other comorbidities such as diabetes obesity and so forth. Another misperception is that it's an all or nothing if you don't do your exercises all the time diligently then there's no point you might as well give up and do nothing and that's actually not correct a little bit is better than nothing so even doing a little bit of exercise being a little bit more active is going to be beneficial.
