4.1: Why Get Physical

What We Will Learn

This lesson helps you understand why moving your body every day is good for you. You will also practice setting goals, called SMART Goals, to help you stay active and spend less time sitting still.

Health Guideline: Move More, Sit Less

The main idea of this lesson: move your body more often, and sit still less often.

Let's talk about your goals:

• How is your current SMART Goal going?
• What could you do better to reach your goal? (These are called "grows.")
• What are you already doing well? (These are called "glows.")

Which guideline from today's lesson matches your goal? Do you already have a SMART Goal that fits?

Choose one activity to try:

1. Guideline Popcorn: As a group, take turns quickly calling out all 8 health guidelines.

1. Guideline Charades: Split into small groups. Each group gets a guideline and must act it out silently while everyone else guesses.

1. Two Truths and One Lie:
2. Truth: Being active regularly lowers stress and worry.
3. Truth: Being active regularly helps you feel good about yourself.
4. Lie: Being active regularly makes you more tired during the day. (This one is false!)

1. Talk or write about these questions:
2. What physical activities do you enjoy most?
3. Where do you usually do these activities?
4. What new activities would you like to try?
5. How do you usually feel after being active?

We will also talk about why physical activity is good for both your body and your mind.

Important Words to Know

• Fitness: Being able to do everyday tasks with energy, without getting tired too fast.
• Physical Activity: Any movement your muscles make that uses energy.
• Exercise: A special kind of physical activity that is planned and done on purpose, again and again, to help your body.
• Overload: When you push your body to work harder than usual — this is what makes you stronger over time.
• Sedentary: Sitting a lot and not moving much.
• Evaluate: To think carefully about how important or useful something is.
• Benefit: A good result that helps you.
• Barrier: Something that makes it hard to do what you want to do.

Do Now: What's Your Fitness Personality?

Fill out the Fitness Personality Quiz. Then share your results with a partner or the class.

There are many different ways to be active. Since everyone is different, we all like different kinds of activities. The type of activities you enjoy can depend on your personality! You can use this to help plan your own exercise goals.

Remember: fitness means being able to do daily tasks with energy, without getting tired.

• Mostly A's — Competitive: You love being part of a team, on the field or off it. You're ready to play almost any sport — soccer, softball, even beach volleyball! Try to play hard a few times a week, but remember to rest too. Everyone needs downtime to recharge.

• Mostly B's — Social: You do your best when you're with other people. You like going full speed with your friends by your side. Try joining a class like martial arts, dance, or aerobics. These classes usually meet a few times a week for 30 minutes or more — the perfect amount of exercise!

• Mostly C's — Solitary: You like exercising on your own. Swimming, bike riding, or jogging in the park are great choices. Try to get moving a few times a week for at least 30 minutes.

• Mostly D's — Relaxed: You like a slower, calmer lifestyle, but there are still ways to stay fit! Yoga and Pilates mix stretching and breathing to keep your body strong without leaving you out of breath. Try to do this a few times a week.

Good to Know: Physical Activity vs. Sitting Still

Physical activity is any movement your muscles make that uses energy. Being active isn't just good for how your body looks on the outside — it's also good for your mind on the inside.

Physical activity changes how you think, how you feel, how long you live, and what your body can do. Today, we'll talk about why physical activity matters for both your body and mind.

Fitness means being able to do daily tasks with energy, without getting tired. Exercise is a planned, repeated kind of physical activity done on purpose to help your body get stronger or stay healthy. Exercise is one type of physical activity.

Your body uses energy all the time — even just to keep your heart beating, your lungs breathing, and your stomach digesting food. But that doesn't mean you're always being "physically active." To grow stronger, your body needs to work harder than usual sometimes. This is called overload. When overload happens, three things happen in your body:

• Your heart rate (pulse) speeds up.
• Your breathing rate speeds up.
• Your skin may turn pink or get sweaty.

Sedentary means sitting a lot and not moving much.

How do you feel after sitting or lying down all day? You might feel:

• Sore or achy
• Tired
• Weak
• Worried or sad
• Unable to focus

How do you feel after being active? You might feel:

• Full of energy
• Happy
• Clear-headed and focused

Which feeling is better?

When you sit too much, you might feel sore, tired, weak, or grumpy. That's because our bodies are built to move! When you sit all day, your muscles get strained, and over time they can weaken. Sitting too much also makes it harder for your blood to carry important nutrients to parts of your body, like your brain. Scientists have found that sitting too much is linked to a higher chance of serious diseases, like Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. It's also linked to more worry and trouble paying attention. That's why it's so important to get moving!

Want to learn more? You can watch two short videos:

• "What happens inside your body when you exercise?"
• "Why Sitting is Bad For You"

Real World Connection: Reasons to Move

Let's think about the good things (benefits) that come from being active every day, the problems (barriers) that get in the way, and how we can solve them. We'll also think about how being active affects our feelings.

How much activity do you need each day?
Kids and teens should be active for 60 minutes every day. Adults should exercise about 2½ to 5 hours each week.

We will evaluate — meaning figure out the value of — the benefits of physical activity, how much time you need, the barriers that get in the way, and how to solve them.

Everyone is different. What you enjoy doing probably falls somewhere between "sitting on the couch" and "running a marathon." Wherever you are, take small steps to reach your daily goals!

Hands-On: Academics and Fitness

You will read a short article that may use harder words than you're used to. Here's an example, about whether exercise can help treat depression (a serious, ongoing feeling of sadness):

"Depression is a common disorder that is associated with compromised quality of life, increased health care costs, and greater risk for a variety of medical conditions, particularly coronary heart disease. This review examines methods for assessing depression and discusses current treatment approaches. Traditional treatments include psychotherapy and antidepressant medications, but such treatments are not effective for all patients and alternative approaches have recently received increased attention, especially the use of aerobic exercise. This review examines evidence that exercise is effective in improving depressive symptoms among patients with major depression and offers practical suggestions for helping patients initiate an..."