On Health with Houston Methodist
On Health with Houston Methodist is for the health conscious, curious and even skeptics out there. Each week, our hosts are joined by a Houston Methodist expert to explore an everyday wellness trend or significant health topic.
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On Health with Houston Methodist
Staying Active: What Counts as Exercise & How Much Is Enough?
Wondering whether your exercise routine is hitting the mark? You’re not alone. Most of us leave P.E. class behind without ever really learning how to work out as adults. In this episode, we break down what counts as exercise, how much you need and why intensity matters. From everyday activities to structured workouts, learn what truly moves the needle for your health and fitness. Plus, practical tips for tracking progress and staying consistent — without overcomplicating things.
Expert: Dr. Jonathan Zalamea, Primary Care Sports Medicine Physician
Notable topics covered:
- Physical activity vs. exercise: What’s the difference?
- Walking the dog, cleaning the house, yardwork — do they count?
- How heart rate plays into exercise intensity and why that matters
- It’s not all cardio — the value of strength training
- Exercise isn’t the only wellness factor that impacts your fitness
- Tips for staying motivated for exercise
- New to the gym? What to try first
- Fitness tracking: The good, the bad, the fixation
- Tips for recovering between workouts
- What to do if pain or injury sets you back
If you enjoy these kinds of conversations, be sure to subscribe. And for more topics like this, visit our blog at houstonmethodist.org/blog.
Welcome to On Health with Houston Methodist. I'm Zach Moore. I'm a photographer and editor here, and I'm also a longtime podcaster.
KATIE MCCALLUM:I'm Katie McCallum, former researcher, turned health writer, mostly writing for our blogs.
ZACH:And Katie, do you consider yourself an active adult?
KATIE:I think I do. I'm not sure that I always have and I'm not sure I've always really even thought about it, but these days, yes, it's top of mind. How about you?
ZACH:Sometimes. In spurts, I guess. I would consider you an active adult. I mean, you're always talking about the workouts you do and the classes you have and the things you're trying out. So from the outsider's perspective, I would label you an active adult.
KATIE:Okay. I'm going to take that as a compliment because I do try to be so that means what I'm putting out there reflects what I'm trying to do.
ZACH:Would you agree with my assessment of myself?
KATIE:Yes, I think especially on this podcast. We've had sometimes where you mentioned getting back in exercise, sometimes where you mentioned maybe falling out of exercise. It's hard to be an active person to be honest.
ZACH:It is.
KATIE:No one ever teaches you how to work out. You have PE as a kid, you maybe play organized sports, maybe you play some intramurals in college, but then no one ever kind of like, shows you how to structure a workout program, and that's the kind of the only way to be active these days just given how sedentary we all are.
ZACH:Is it a societal shift too? A lot of people want to say, like, "Well, you know, back when I was your age, we used to go outside and play and now you sit inside on your device." And that is true, but I mean, we had video games when we were kids and we had TV, so I wouldn't put it just on that, but it doesn't help.
KATIE:I think it's an adult thing. I think when you're an adult, you just don't have time for that stuff anymore.
ZACH:Why don't you go outside and play?
KATIE:As an adult, I find it very confusing to understand if I'm being active enough. And even as you said, I'm someone who kinda tries to work out pretty frequently, I still always wonder like,"Does this count? Does this count? Does yoga count as my, you know 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise today?" I have no clue sometimes.
ZACH:So we have a lot of questions about this obviously. Who did we ask?
KATIE:We talked to Dr. Jonathan Zalamea, he's a primary care sports medicine doctor, and he sorta breaks down for us, you know, the definition I should say, of exercise when it's just you being active versus actual exercise and how to get it done and ways to track it and all sorts of things that I think it's going to be really helpful for anybody who's not quite sure if they're hitting the mark.♪ ♪Hi, Dr. Zalamea. Thanks for being here with us today.
DR. JONATHAN ZALAMEA:Thank you for having me.
KATIE:I think there's this point in everyone's life, and I think it happens to all of us at different times where we kind of start to ask ourselves, like,"Am I being active enough? Am I moving enough?" I know for me, I played sports growing up, so you know, I was always pretty active as a kid. Aged out of sports during college, meaning like, I wasn't your D1 athlete and yeah, you get to this point where like, walking to class, so I'm walking tons every day. DR. ZALAMEA: Yeah, totally. But then you take a step back and you're like, but am I being active enough? And I don't know, it becomes this interesting question. I think everyone hits it a different time. Maybe you never played sports and you someday realize like, I probably need to not just sit on the couch all day. But it's tough, right, because it's like, what counts as active? DR. ZALAMEA: Yeah, for sure. So it's kinda funny because whenever we talk about exercise and school or exercise and work even, it kinda reminds me of whenever patients first see me for wellness visits, because they usually see me at 30 or 40 because they're like,"Wow, am I actually..." They hit a milestone,"Am I actually doing the right thing?" Yeah. Like, have I got this right?
DR. ZALAMEA:Yeah, so there've actually been some studies done that show that whenever it comes to exercise, it's actually leisure time exercise where you're actually doing physical activity in a structured environment or in a structured way for the purpose of cardiovascular exercise. That's what's really beneficial. Sure, walking to class may be helpful, but the research shows that if you're doing it structured, it's proven more so to help out with your heart and stuff like that.
KATIE:I mean, I guess, would you say that's when it's exercise? I guess to me, I think of physical activity, like, yeah, I took the dog for a walk, or I vacuumed, or I took two flights of stairs instead of the elevator or something. Would any of that that I've just said count as exercise and maybe I'm not giving myself credit for things?
DR. ZALAMEA:Yeah.
KATIE:Because I'm reaching for straws here already so we know how this is gonna go. DR. ZALAMEA: What can we do? What am I doing that can already count for this? Kind of, yeah.
DR. ZALAMEA:All that kind of stuff. To simplify it, for exercise, I ask patients to get their heart rate above a hundred, and I ask them to make sure that they're doing this on purpose. So like, whenever you're walking the dog, you're not just letting the dog use the bathroom, that you're walking with purpose and you're doing so for a particular amount of time every week. Now, sometimes we get into the nitty-gritty with patients where we're talking about intensity of the exercise and per the book it says moderate versus vigorous intensity, but to simplify it for patients, it's really about conversational level. So whenever we are able to have a conversation while we're working out, then that means that you're likely doing some moderate intensity exercise as long as that heart rate's above a hundred. If we're not able to have a conversation, then that probably means that we're doing a vigorous workout and that's a more intense exercise that meets other criteria and all that kind of stuff.
KATIE:Okay. How much of either of those do you want someone to be doing per day?
DR. ZALAMEA:So that recommendation comes directly from a couple of studies. There was one study that shows that exercise reduces your risk of heart attack and stroke, and then there was another study that shows that exercise reduces your risk of cancer. All but one cancer, one cancer went up with exercise, which is interesting. KATIE: Okay. Which one? Do we know? It was skin cancer. Because you're outside more.
KATIE:Okay. You're outside more. Okay.
DR. ZALAMEA:I mentioned that, I say that portion of it all to patients just to kinda show that like, you know we are not trying to find a study that fits with what we want to say or whatever. Like, it's just the data that's out there, right, and it does show that there was a cancer that went up, which is that. But per both of those papers, they say that we need to have at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise.
KATIE:Per week.
DR. ZALAMEA:Per week, and we're typically wanting that spread throughout the week. For example, if you are on the couch all the way Sunday through Friday and then Saturday you happen to do like, 75 minutes of exercise, that's not as preferred as if you were to spread that throughout the week.
KATIE:Okay. Yeah, that was going to be my next question is can I front load all of this onto my, like, I'm feeling good-
DR. ZALAMEA:What's the littlest that we can do?
KATIE:Yeah, it's Monday, I'm starting the week strong, and then whoo. Okay. So no, we should probably be trying to spread it out and things like that. Okay. Another thing I wanted to ask you about, since you mentioned cardio, I know I've heard more and more about strength training and it's more than just cardio and stuff, so what does that look like as far as being active or exercising enough? I mean, does a stair climber kinda count as both, or you're getting some strength training, you're getting some cardio, or should it be separate time completely?
DR. ZALAMEA:So whenever, and this is probably more fresh in my mind because I've had this conversation more recently with some patients with regards to exercise, and the common theme was that I don't want to be a gym rat or I don't want to be like, The Rock or something like that. Like, "Doc, why are you expecting me to kinda be that?" Whenever I mention exercise, right? And what I'm usually mentioning is that you don't have to do gym stuff, you don't have to work out in the gym, you don't have to lift weights in order for you to meet the criteria for exercise. But to more directly answer your question, strength training is whenever you're either lifting weights or using resistance in some other way, like resistance bands in an effort to try to grow your muscle mass, try to break down the muscle tissue so that way that you can rebuild it back up stronger. And we typically recommend that in two scenarios. One is for patients who are worried about bone health, so we're making sure that if they have osteoporosis or something like that, we're wanting to make sure that their bones are strong or my athletes who want to perform better if we're trying to build up muscle in order to perform better. Like, I had a high school athlete recently who was trying take it to the next level. We're talking about ways to do strength and resistance training to improve that. Those are kinda the two scenarios where I really think about it the most. KATIE: Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. One thing I would say is that to your point about the gym rat, I would challenge people to do pushups. They're really hard. Oh my gosh, pushups are so hard. Yeah, for sure.
KATIE:I, like until a couple of years ago, hadn't really done a pushup and was doing a body weight training class, and she was like,"Oh, yeah, we're going to do 30 seconds of pushups." And I'm like, "Yeah, let's go." DR. ZALAMEA: Yeah, pushups. I was struggling to get through the 30 seconds of pushups. My goodness. Lifting your own body, it's really hard.
DR. ZALAMEA:Yeah, it's difficult. It's for sure difficult. KATIE: Okay. Sorry, that was just an aside, just because that was my personal wake up call that I am not as in shape as I think I am. And to that point, I mean, how does someone know -- if I'm meeting those criteria, I'm active enough, I'm in shape, is that kind of it? I'm getting my 150 minutes of moderate exercise, I'm strength training you know, a couple of days, things like that. Is that to say I'm in shape at that point and that's enough or is there ever more that needs to be done? I think that this is where wellness visits come into play whenever I'm talking with patients about overall health, because that's usually whenever I'm talking about exercise, but that's always just one piece of the puzzle. If we're talking about having overall good general health, I'm talking about exercise, but I'm also talking about reducing stress. There's a lot of evidence that shows that stress can cause some issues, even something like cancer. I'm usually talking about making sure that they have a healthy weight. Weight by itself, independent of exercise, independent of diet has been linked to certain things. Probably the next most important thing that I talk about after exercise or with exercise is sleep, making sure quality of sleep is good. Whenever I talk with folks about natural things or things that we could do that's natural, that will improve your life, they're usually looking for maybe a supplement or something like that, but usually what I'm talking about is making sure you're getting adequate exercise and making sure that you're getting good sleep.
KATIE:Gotcha. Okay. You know, since you mentioned things like sleep and stress, I think one thing about staying active that's always been a challenge for me, and I'm sure this is universal, is a lot of the time I just literally don't feel like I have the energy to do it. I mean, do you have any tips just off the top of your head as far as sometimes workouts just feel really hard...
DR. ZALAMEA:Yeah, for sure.
KATIE:... or just feels like, it's not even I don't have the brain motivation to do it, it's like my body just does not want to go do this thing.
DR. ZALAMEA:There's like that inertia, right that kinda prevents you. And I like to use the idea of inertia for that because once you get going, a lot of times once you make it to the gym, you're fine. You'll go through the... KATIE: Yeah, I love this.... workout and yeah, you should get the endorphins going and all that kind of stuff. And it feels good, it's just really getting there.
KATIE:Okay.
DR. ZALAMEA:So with that said, the couple of tips that I've actually learned from patients, one of them, she works from home and because she works from home, she doesn't want to do a workout that's at home, so she has a scheduled workout class that's at 5:30 every day and she has to leave the home to do the workout class because she's also paid into the workout class.
KATIE:I was about to say, okay, smart move because now you've paid for it and it's on the calendar.
DR. ZALAMEA:Because there's the pay in that way. So then she's also committed in that perspective. And then another thing that I've gotten from patients is accountability partners, having a friend or having a family member work with you on it so that way that if you have that inertia to be able to do it, well, you're less likely to just, "Well, I can do it next time." Whenever you have them pushing you like,"Hey, I've actually got this other person also relying on me or also pushing me to do it." So having someone that you can have, hold you accountable could be helpful.
KATIE:I really like that you mentioned the second one. I like both, sorry, but the second one, it's something that I have found myself kind of fall into later in life is that I've been having a harder time getting over the inertia and I don't even notice that I've been doing it, but I talk to my friends more about that and now almost half of what we talk about is like,"Oh, this Peloton workout." Or we'll send them to each other. We'll be like, "Hey, I just did this Peloton workout and it was like, really good, or this was a really good stretch." And I am working out probably more than I ever have because of that. As you were saying it, I was like, yeah, you're right. The community aspect of exercise I think is huge.
DR. ZALAMEA:I mean, for me personally, like, I am not into biking or anything like that, but then I have an uncle who just happened to have an extra bike and it's a good excuse for us to hang out. So like, every Sunday morning we go and I just go over to his house and we just go bike. This past weekend we biked for an hour and a half.
KATIE:Oh, wow. Yeah.
DR. ZALAMEA:Activity like that where you have it linked with someone, not only is that a time for me to get my exercise in, but it's also a time for me to bond with my uncle. It's time for me to be outside, get some vitamin D. So overall, if you can lump it into other things, like, you can make it to where it's more sustainable. What I hate is, well, hate's kind of a strong word, but what I probably dislike whenever I hear this from a patient is whenever they say, "Oh, I signed up for the gym." Because if it's just,"Oh, I signed up for the gym," then like, if you don't really have someone that's going to go with you, if you're not really having something that you're excited to go and to do and you're just forcing yourself, that's not really sustainable. On the other hand, if I have a patient that says,"Oh, yeah. A group of friends and I are trying to train for a half-marathon," or something like that. Oh, like awesome. You have the community aspect there, you have the competitive aspect there, you have a goal in mind, and those are situations where I'm a bit more optimistic that,"Hey, we're going to be able to continue this."
KATIE:Yeah, I think too, the gym membership part of it and just that being the first step, it's tough because then you go to the gym and you're almost immediately overwhelmed because...
DR. ZALAMEA:For sure.
KATIE:...there's a lot of stuff there. There's an etiquette there that you're not sure about sometimes. Before we move on, I mean, any tips for you in the sense of like, someone who's new to going to the gym, they walk into the gym, is there a couple sections you'd say to head toward if you're new with the gym and you're just looking to get started?
DR. ZALAMEA:Yeah, for sure. So first off, I try to make it as simple as possible, so making sure that you're only sticking to no more than three to five exercises per time that you're going to the gym would be helpful. And then usually I'm push pulling against a certain area. So like, for example, if you're working out arms one day, making sure that you're going to the work on bicep on one area where you're using a bicep machine, doing some curls, and then afterwards going to the tricep extension area to pull against that. KATIE: I see. If you're working on the push-pull scenario, you can kind of get a good workout on both sides. Now, to contrast that, some people do have have it where they do bicep and chest one day and then they do tricep and back another day, but making sure that you're not really doing much more, especially if you're starting off much more than five exercises would be helpful. I usually like to start off with like, a period of cardiovascular exercise, so maybe going on the treadmill for 10 to 15 minutes, working on some stretches that will help get some joints moving, and then working on whatever area that you're working on.
KATIE:Gotcha.
DR. ZALAMEA:Again, making sure that you're not overdoing it while you're there. KATIE: Yeah, gotcha. Back to the classes, you mentioned your patient who has that workout class and then gyms offer usually some free classes, Pilates, yoga. Are Pila -- you know, when we talk about intensity, I think about the times that I've done yoga and I'm not sure it's ever felt particularly like, intense. Now, I would say Pilates, there are times where I'm like, it's intense, but not the whole time. So does that still... That's where I get in my head about is this enough to count as a workout? DR. ZALAMEA: Yeah, for sure. So I have some patients that are big yoga enthusiasts and big Pilates enthusiasts who would be like, they're yelling at their whatever podcast app or whatever. They're like, "Yes, of course-"
KATIE:Right now they're so mad at me. Don't get in my comments, please.
DR. ZALAMEA:Exactly. But no, so that's where that parameter that I was talking about heart rates and about your ability to have a conversation comes into play. If you notice that that heart rate's consistently below a hundred, then you're probably not hitting the right yoga exercises. You're not probably working on the right Pilates class that's really pushing you. Now with that said, I don't know, my wife was really into hot yoga at one point, and I joined her for a class and I was just in child's pose the second half of the class because I could not handle it. It was intense. But that is where the guideline with the heart rate thing can show you if you're doing something intense or not. Since I've mentioned that, again, I want to go into the specifics as to why I mentioned the hundred heart rate. By the book, they talk about that moderate intensity exercise being 60% of your max heart rate, and then the rough, rough estimate of max heart rate is 220 minus your age. So if we're talking about 60% of 220 minus your age, a lot of times that's around a hundred.
KATIE:Okay, yeah, good. Because I was like, I am now in the clouds up here in my head, I can't even pay attention anymore. Okay.
DR. ZALAMEA:This is probably more so for that person who's wanting more of the details and knowing the nitty-gritty. That's where that idea comes from is making sure that you're hitting that 60%, which again, roughly equates to like, a hundred for most people.♪ ♪
ZACH:Moderate intensity exercise occurs when you're working at 60% of your max heart rate. You can get a rough estimate of your max heart rate by subtracting your age from the number 220. If you're not a fan of math like me, Dr. Zalamea mentioned that a simpler way to make sure you're exercising at moderate intensity is to just get your heart rate above 100, but not so high that you're too out of breath to have a conversation.♪ ♪
KATIE:Up after the break. We talk about the best ways to track exercise, recover effectively after workouts and come back from an injury should one happen.
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KATIE:I feel like I live and die by my smartwatch right now, and I can't ever tell if it's good for me or bad for me. What's your take on using a device to track your workouts in a healthy way? Let's put it that way.
DR. ZALAMEA:Yeah, for sure. So I myself, I'm into wearing a watch, but that's the reason why I use an Oura ring. It's just interesting because you get to learn about metrics that you wouldn't otherwise pay attention to. I think that -- I'm going to start off with the bad. If you're getting deep into the numbers and trusting that those numbers are like, the Bible, like complete truth and all that kinda stuff, and this is exactly where I need to be, and you want to change up those heart rate numbers and all that kind of stuff, if you're treating as if it's a medical device, like, that's a bad way to go into it. Also, if you notice that you're having an increased amount of anxiety related to having that device and you've already touched base with the physician who told you that likely those numbers and those metrics that you're looking at are reassuring that you don't have to worry about it, that's probably not a good thing to have on you. Now, with that said, for my patients, the ideal gold standard would be Vo2 max training. So someone having like, a mask on you where you're running through this treadmill and they're measuring your Vo2 max. Like, what's the level... What's your ability to be able to consume oxygen? And the reality is is that vast, vast, vast majority of people, if you're not someone like LeBron James, you probably don't need to do Vo2 max training because those metrics don't necessarily mean as much to you, and then also, it's going to cost a lot of money and a lot of time for maybe little benefit. All of these devices try to give you an estimate for that. But what I encourage patients to do is just make a change in their life that we know is good for you. So having adequate sleep, having good amount of exercise, making sure that we're making the right dietary changes, and then see what those numbers do over time. So like, for example, if you are using the Oura ring and it's telling you that your cardiovascular age is five years older than where you're at, well then there's a reason for that. That's probably because you don't have as much exercise tolerance or you're not working out as much as you're supposed to and all that kind of stuff. So use that as motivation to get you back in exercising. On the other hand, if we're paying attention to heart rate recovery and we're only using that as our metric that we're paying attention to, it might cause more stress than actual benefit.
KATIE:I will say, the new trend for some of these smart devices to guess your age based on your fitness is a little stressful.
DR. ZALAMEA:It's pretty stressful.
KATIE:I've been little scared to ever look because I'm just like, oh, no. What if it thinks I'm way older than I am? I feel like I'm trying hard.
DR. ZALAMEA:Yeah, most definitely. One thing that I actually have enjoyed about these different devices is the idea of recovery, and whenever we talk about how effective your recovery has been. I mentioned about myself using the Oura ring, but there are a lot of other people who use other devices that do a similar thing where they track recovery, and I love that they're doing that because that's a big portion of your health. It's not just about how much you exercise, but it's also how effective your recovery process is after that to allow your body to get back to its normal state. This is where we start getting interesting results whenever it comes to dietary changes and stuff like that. I had a patient just recently tell me about how he eliminated all alcohol from his diet. He eliminated all alcohol from his life because he noticed that whenever he would even just have one drink, that it would cause his recovery to just plummet. More than any type of issue with sleep or stress at work or anything like that, alcohol was just consistently bad for his recovery. And it kind of is nice because it shows you what your body's going through as it's consuming the alcohol and attaches like a numerical value in front of you as to what's going on in there.
KATIE:I anecdotally, I also see that with mine. Mine shows me my vitals and tells me whether I've recovered. And if there's a night where I've even had one drink, my vitals are almost noticeably different and it's kinda crazy, like to your point. That is one... But then I get a little stressed out about it, but also maybe the solution is to potentially try to not drink. Because again, I'm being shown something you know, and I just don't want to see it probably.
DR. ZALAMEA:Yeah, for sure. And that's the difficulty that we run into, right, is that there's such thing as maybe too much data, especially if we don't have specific things that we can attach to with it. The studies that are out there show that you're okay to have a drink a day, so maybe that increase in heart rate and difficulty with recovery is not too, too bad.
KATIE:Unless you're LeBron James.
DR. ZALAMEA:Unless you're LeBron James. We're trying to make sure we're a well-engineered specimen.
KATIE:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
DR. ZALAMEA:But outside of that, then yeah, maybe it's not as big of a deal.
KATIE:Okay. Question for you. Let's say I'm getting more active, things like that. How do you know if you're doing too much? We talked about the recovery, so maybe this will be a good segue. How do you know if you're doing too much and what's too sore and things like that? How do you know if you're overdoing it?
DR. ZALAMEA:The thing that I mention with my patients often whenever it comes to exercise, well, first off, immediately what comes to mind is if it's affecting your day-to-day life in a negative way, your exercise is, meaning you're going to the gym like three, three and a half hours a day and your loved ones are wondering where you're at...
KATIE:I see.
DR. ZALAMEA:Maybe that'd be a problem.
KATIE:Okay, gotcha.
DR. ZALAMEA:That's a direct thought from a patient scenario that I ran into recently. But yeah, so if it's affecting your family life significantly, that could be a problem. But more commonly whenever it comes to exercise, it's whenever you're noticing that soreness or a pain in the joints, especially one that is causing you to not have good form is affecting you more than just a couple of days. If we're noticing that that's happening for more than a couple of days, I worry that you might've run into an injury and that maybe we need to do something to fix it, or maybe you just need to see someone in order to make some recommendations, right? Sports medicine physician or something like that. Probably the most scary scenario would be for my runners and shin pain. You always hear about shin splints, that's where the muscle is tugging on the bone and all that kind of stuff, right, and it's making that little interface be very painful. But what we worry about sometimes is whenever that shin splint pain lasts you for longer than just a couple of days, especially if we're getting into weeks, then I worry about a potential stress fracture. And a lot of times whenever we run into that type of discomfort where it's lasting you that many weeks, usually we're noticing a sacrifice in your form. So that's kind of the reason why I mentioned,"Hey, if you're not able to maintain correct form or do your day-to-day things with the correct type of form, maybe that's a reason that we need to back off or see somebody." KATIE: Okay. When you mentioned seeing somebody, sports medicine physician is the good go-to, and I think a lot of us maybe don't know what that is. so can you just talk to me about the role of a sports medicine physician and kind of what to expect when you go. And then I know you're a primary care sports medicine physician, so I also want to talk about how cool that is, but first let's get to just what the sports medicine physician is. DR. ZALAMEA: Yeah, for sure. So I think what I'm thinking about whenever I mention sports -- seeing a sports medicine physician, I am thinking about primary care sports medicine. So all of us are primary care trained in some way. So most popularly here in Houston, it's probably family medicine trained. And then you did additional training in sports medicine, so you spent a whole year learning about orthopedic injuries that happen and other sports related issues. And the reason why I specify,"Hey, maybe whenever you're recovering or whenever you're trying to figure out what's going on with you after a workout, you may want to talk with a sports medicine physician," is that we know the things that are dangerous and we also know where you can still push it. And what I'm afraid of is that if we go to the wrong person who's going to just suggest that you rest for four to six weeks, then we will end up heading in the wrong direction and causing problems because whenever you rest for four to six weeks, the issue that happened to begin with did not change. So for example, if it was a running form problem if you tell the person to rest for four to six weeks, now the muscles are weaker and then they're still going to have that incorrect form whenever they go back to running, right? So seeing a primary care sports medicine physician may be helpful for that. The other nice thing is that it's head to toe, anything sports related. If you have any issues, you can come in to see us. We're not specific to one area or one age group or anything like that. So if you're having an issue with exercise, it's kind of a safe bet.
KATIE:Yeah. It's something that I wish, I think I would've known about in my 20s. I often call myself a lemon because I feel like I get hurt a lot. Not really hurt, but I feel like things... I'm not physically hurt, but things are achy. But I've been like this since my 20s, and so I probably really would've, my form was probably awful. And now I've carried all of this into my 30s and I think I finally have course corrected pretty well. But yeah, there was a huge gap in my life where I probably just needed someone like you to sit me down and say, "Hey, you just need to work on your form when you do this." Or, "Turns out you need to have good core muscles. You can't just slouch over and expect everything to work fine." I would do exactly what you said. I would take a break and then when I would go back, I would just be hurting again. I just find it so interesting because I at that age did not even think about it, and I think a lot of people don't really think about it because you don't really know that you need something until you need it kind of thing.
DR. ZALAMEA:Yeah, for sure.
KATIE:You don't know what you need.
DR. ZALAMEA:The mantra that people think about is RICE. It's like the rest, ice, compression, elevation. Whenever they're thinking about injury, they think of RICE, but then what's after RICE? What do you do after RICE? What happens next? And a lot of times it just stays at that R, at that rest, and then we don't really move on from that. And then that's whenever bad habits develop or issues arise and we kind of get into a bad cycle.
KATIE:Yeah, absolutely. I think that's going to do it for us today on my end at least. Dr. Zalamea, is there any... You know, we've talked about a lot today, how much we should be exercising. We've talked about what that should look like or feel like, I guess I should say. Is there anything else you would add or do you have top tips or something you'd leave people with who are kind of like realizing they need to stay active and need to get it done?
DR. ZALAMEA:Yeah, for sure. So whenever it comes to folks who are already active, developing a routine whenever you graduate from college or whatever else, developing a routine that holds you accountable, like you've had the accountability all throughout college would be very helpful. So for example, we had talked about previously about having the accountability buddy or making sure that you have that workout class that you're going to regularly. By doing those things you can keep up with what you know helps you keep exercise going because of course, previously it was a coach that was telling you to do it.
KATIE:Exactly.
DR. ZALAMEA:Now, it's a friend- KATIE: You're on your own.... or the coach that's at the workout in the workout class, that's helping us out, right? Whenever it comes to my patients or the people out there who are having difficulty with the idea of restarting exercise, I always mention, don't give up hope. Something is better than nothing. So even if you just hit 10 minutes of a walk, like, that's better than you not having done anything for that day. Inertia is real. Having that difficulty, even just getting outside to do the walk is difficult. So any time that you're able to initiate, even that little bit of exercise is worth it.
KATIE:I think that's actually a great note to end on because I really love that, that something is better than nothing, even if it's just 10 minutes. I think I have kind of found myself finally starting to accept that as well, and it's helped a ton. Because then sometimes I'll even take it further after and things like that once I just help myself commit to even something small, it'll just snowball in a good way. DR. ZALAMEA: Yeah, for sure. So yeah, I love that message. Everything counts. DR. ZALAMEA: Oh, for sure. All right, well, thanks so much for being with us here today.
DR. ZALAMEA:Yeah, thank you so much for having me.♪ ♪
ZACH:All right, Katie, what are some of your big takeaways after talking to Dr. Zalamea?
KATIE:I think my biggest takeaway is that we're not alone. He even sees in his own clinic that people are confused. I think he said most people see him at age 30 and their question is like,"Am I even doing this right? Am I doing this exercise thing right? So we're not alone. This is a popular question.
ZACH:Yeah. I mean, something simple that I often think about is I walk my dog every day, a couple of times a day, and does that make me an active adult? And unless I'm walking with intention, no, that's not really active.
KATIE:Yeah. He had a pretty good definition that I think made sense to me that it needs to be something you do in your leisure time, but you put structure around. So if you have a really active job, maybe that's still not exercise. You need to in your leisure time, set aside time and it needs to be sort of like,"Hey, I'm going to go out and do this and I'm going to try to think about my heart rate and get over a hundred." That's when it's exercise. It has to have some of that structure rather than like,"Oh, I'm taking my dog for a walk, and we stopped 90 times in the same fields because that's where they want to sniff." That's always been my biggest thing is like what counts.
ZACH:And any movement is good movement. Don't get us wrong. So walking your dog, let's not discount that. But if you're going to walk your dog, maybe jog a little bit, start, stop.
KATIE:I think, yeah, any movement is good, but it's that purposeful, sort of more intense movement that gives you those cardiovascular benefits that have been really proven to help your health span and your lifespan and things like that. You know, obviously, getting moving is good. And I liked too that he mentioned you can't just get all your exercise in one day or maybe two. You got your 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise by Tuesday. Well, you still need to be moving and being active on Wednesday and Thursday, Friday and Saturday and Sunday. Like, you got to spread it out. ZACH: Absolutely. Something he mentioned that I definitely related to was when you go to the gym, don't feel like you got to be there for an hour and a half and work until you fall over tired. Go there with a very specific plan. You can be 30, 40 minutes, right, knock out these short list of exercises and just do that consistently. Because then whenever my never ending journey of getting back into exercise, which I go on and off of, was always like, "Okay. Well, I came here. I got to stay here for an hour and I'm not going to leave until I can't lift my arms anymore." And that sort of thing. And that's not really the best approach. Yeah, I think he said, have just a three or four exercises you want to do. ZACH: Exactly. I liked the other piece of advice, which he said he got from one of his patients actually, that having accountability buddies or just accountability because you've paid for a workout and now you need to go or something to keep you accountable. I think that's always been my struggle is, is what I'm doing enough? And then once I begin to question that, I immediately am like,"Well, if this isn't enough, then I'm not going to do anything." And yeah, it's been a long kinda journey for me. I wish someone would've just taught me, you know, these basics a long time ago. I think I slowly found myself there eventually, but if someone could have just held my hand coming out of college and been like,"Hey, here's what your workout program should look like. Now, go do it," I would've really enjoyed that.
ZACH:We have, like you mentioned off the top, we have physical education classes. We even have a health class in middle school and high school, but I can't even really tell you what we learned.
KATIE:It's like learning how to do your taxes and stuff. No one taught us how to do taxes in school. No one teaches you how to do basic finances. There's some of these life skills you have to figure out on your own almost. I'm glad we did this episode so that people who are young or new in their sort of exercise journey will have some tips going in and they won't sit there and flounder for 10 plus years like I did.
ZACH:Yeah, and you know what? None of us have ever been adults before, right? We're all experiencing adulting for the first time, so don't have any shame, we're all figuring it out, and this was helpful tips to become an active adult if you're not so already. KATIE: Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, that's going to do it for this episode of On Health with Houston Methodist. Be sure to share, like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We drop episodes Tuesday mornings, so until next time, stay tuned and stay healthy.♪ ♪