Exercise For Women After 40: Building Strength, Endurance, and Joy for Life

Tired of fitness advice that doesn't fit your life? 

In this enlightening episode, Dr. Orlena breaks down the science of exercise for women, revealing why traditional workout wisdom might be holding you back. 

You'll discover why women over 50 should lift heavier weights (but with fewer reps), learn how to build sustainable fitness habits that bring joy instead of burnout, and understand the crucial link between exercise and maintaining independence as you age. 

Whether you're just starting your fitness journey or looking to optimize your current routine, this episode delivers practical, evidence-based strategies for building strength, endurance, and vitality that lasts a lifetime. 

Perfect for women who want to stay active, strong, and independent well into their later years – while actually enjoying their exercise routine along the way."

Mentioned in the podcast:
Podcast with Dr Stacy Sims "The Huberman Lab": https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/huberman-lab/id1545953110?i=1000662955352

Dr Orlena's Eat Smart System: https://www.drorlena.com/dr-orlena-eat-smart-system 

Sign up for the Stop Dieting and Start Thriving Video:

https://www.drorlena.com/stop-dieting

Looking for support? Book a free call with Dr Orlena: https://bookme.name/drorlena/positively-healthy-chat-with-dr-orlena-fb

Transcript

Dr Orlena (00:06.411)
Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena I hope that you are feeling amazing, amazing today. Okay, request today to talk about fitness and exercise. This is from Liz who is in the Facebook group. So side note, if you want me to do a podcast, come and join the Facebook group and then you can say, hey, I really love a podcast about this.

it needs to be on health and wellness and leading a healthy life. So Liz said, I would like to know about fitness and any tips that you have for endurance and flexibility and things like that. So hooray, let's talk about fitness and exercise. And I think at this point, it is really useful to take a step back and think about, okay,

What are the benefits of exercise and what do we want to achieve? Because there's so many different things out there. Now, if we think about benefits of exercise, what does exercise do to us and why should we bother with exercise? So let's just break it down and have a think. Number one, it helps us lead a long and healthy life. There are so many studies that basically show if you exercise,

you're less likely to die. So for example, one that springs to mind, was one last year, it was a big heart study. I think it was in the American Journal of Cardiology and it basically looked, it was looking at men and women and whether exercise impacts their life and reduces their risk of heart disease. And the big standing answer was yes, whether you're doing cardiovascular or weight exercise, actually women got more benefit than men did. So.

there are health consequences, health consequences to reduce your risk of heart disease, to reduce your risk of diabetes, to reduce your risk of certain cancers. So basically to be healthy. And I think if we look at where we are now as an individual, what is our goal in life? And wherever we are, whether you're in your 40s or 50s or 60s or 70s, we want to along to...

Dr Orlena (02:16.735)
the life that we have in front of us. So right now, what does life look now? But also towards the end of our life. And we really want to be leading the end of our life in a healthy way, as opposed to, you know, really living to a long period of time, but in poor health and not being able to do things. So that journey to being strong and healthy in your eighties and nineties and being independent and being able to do all these things, such as we say, activities of daily living,

it actually starts now. So if you're in your 40s or 50s, it starts now. And that is really how we maintain being able to look after ourselves. After the age of 40, we lose muscle. And I'm sure you've all heard this, but basically from the age of 40 onwards, our muscle...

bulk gets less every single year unless we do something to support that, to stop that from happening. So that means if you look at people later on in their life, and you might see an older person in their 80s or 90s who has very little muscle bulk, they're very small and they're very thin, basically that started in their 40s and they didn't do anything to reverse that. They didn't do anything to either maintain or grow their muscles. As opposed to,

There are loads of people, well, not loads, but there are some people who are in their 80s who are busy lifting weights and swimming and running and doing so much exercise. Did they start that in their 80s? Probably not. They probably started that much, much earlier. So just a big thought, where do you want to be when you are older? So obviously I've just told you another benefit of exercise and that is building muscles. Now, how do we build muscles? Well, we'll talk about that in a minute.

So it's not as simple as just any exercise will help your muscles. Well, it will a little bit, but not really where we want to get to. So let's put that on hold and we'll come back to muscles. So here are our benefits. We have got benefits of avoiding nasty diseases, benefits of being strong and being able to do things later on in life. And by that, you know, there is just normal stuff, just leading your life, being able to lead your life, but also being able to do amazing things like,

Dr Orlena (04:36.317)
swim in the sea or run and jump or play whatever sport you want to. So really, you know, thinking about enjoyment as well and thinking one of the big keys to exercise is finding something that really lights you up, something that you really enjoy doing. Okay, bones. We need to talk about bones, particularly women, particularly menopausal women, we lose our bone strength. Thanks, estrogen disappearing from us. This is really what's happening is that we lose our estrogen

and that really helps support our bone strength. And so we really want to be maintaining our bone strength as well. And then we want to think about flexibility and our joints. It's great to be strong, but we don't just want to be able to walk in a straight line. We want to be able to do other things as well. And the other thing that I think is really important is we want to avoid injury because injury is really big negative mark. So,

You know, think about somebody who is training and training and really training loads and loads such that they injured themselves and then they have to stop training as opposed to, if you're just training 70 to 80 % and you don't get that injury, you probably get more benefit from that than being injured. So you really, really want to avoid injuring yourself because not only is it painful and not great, but also it impacts you being able to exercise. Okay, so those are some of the...

goals that we have and some of the benefits we have. Just as a side note, Liz asked about endurance. What is endurance? Well, interestingly, women are much, much better at endurance than men are. If you look at the people in the world who are endurance athletes, they are normally women. But endurance is not running a marathon.

Endurance is really like it's a step above that. So most of us won't be doing endurance. Now I know what Liz means. She means, okay, I want to last a little bit longer in my own exercise, but endurance in sports is really doing things like ultra marathons and running for, you know, my friend, think of Angela, she was.

Dr Orlena (06:45.235)
on this podcast last year and she is gonna walk across the Pyrenees in the summer, that's 900 kilometers. Something like that is endurance where you basically keep going and keep going and keep going. It's like marathons plus ultra marathons, things that crazy people do. Now, obviously they're not crazy. It is a challenge and we grow from challenges and it's fun to set ourselves challenges. you you might think, okay, actually, I really want to achieve this. And if your goal is,

Endurance, if you're a woman, you've got more of a possibility of doing that. It's hard stuff, But if we go back to, the rest of us who don't want to do these big, amazing endurance things, we just want to enjoy our lives and really get benefit from moving our body. another big thing I didn't talk about is...

Another big benefit is stress reduction and actually feeling good in your life, enjoying life, but stress reduction exercise is one of the best ways to decrease stress. And if you have a regular stress, sorry, a regular exercise routine, it decreases your stress levels. And for me, I have a really strong exercise routine and I'll tell you what my routine is in a little bit, but I...

do my exercise routine partly because it gives me energy, partly because I know it just generally reduces my stress and it helps me just be myself, be the person I want to be as opposed to having my batteries drained and feeling tired and groggy and in that like I haven't got enough energy for myself. So how can I possibly help anybody else? How can I help my kids with their big emotions and things like that? So it's really about looking after yourself first.

Now, another big thing that people think, okay, I want to exercise to lose weight. Now, this is an interesting thought. Is exercise the best way to lose weight? And the answer is a big fat stinking, no, it's not. If you want to lose weight, if weight loss is your goal, then you want to be looking at how you eat and how you sleep.

Dr Orlena (08:58.235)
and your stress levels. Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't do any exercise and that actually if you build up your muscle bulk, that is gonna help you lose weight, but it is much, much easier to focus on the other things than it is to exercise yourself out. What does that saying go? You can't run your way out of a bad diet. And the reason for this is kind of simple.

you need energy to exercise. So think about going for a five kilometer walk. And it doesn't really matter whether you go for a walk or you go for a run, you burn the same amount of calories, you just do it more quickly if you're running than if you're walking. So however many calories you burn,

is going to be, you're just basically gonna eat those calories because you need to fuel that. So you basically just under do all of that. So it's much better to have a healthy diet where you're not eating junk food and you're really looking after your body's nutritional needs and doing some exercise on top of that for all the other reasons. And yes, because it will help. I'm not saying exercise has no place in terms of weight loss. It does, but it's not where you need to start focusing. Most people need to start focusing

on nutrition and on a side note, my new program, Dr. Orlena's Eat Smart System, we've had module one out, it's amazing, it is really a system that is gonna help you create a system so that you are eating healthily, nourishing your body, enjoying it and having the tools to maintain that. Right now.

we are still in the early adopter stage, which means I am busy creating that program. So right now, the price is much lower than it's going to be. So I'll give you more detail, give you a link so that you can go and have a look at it. The price is going to be $350. And right now until next Monday, you can get it for 199. And it's amazing time to start because you get free coaching calls and things like that, because I want your feedback. So come and check that out. If you have just one thing that you can do this year, really sort it

Dr Orlena (11:02.947)
out your nutrition is a really good place to start. Okay, anyhow, back to exercise. All of these amazing benefits.

Okay, that's great, but what are you gonna do and how are you going to create this routine that you have and how are you going to fit it into your lifestyle? So there are so many different things that you could do and different styles of exercise too. So you can do going for a walk. Is going for a walk beneficial? Yes, it is. Moving our body is beneficial. You can do.

Cardiovascular, what is cardiovascular? Cardiovascular is swimming and running and getting your heart rate up. And the benefits of this is that you become more fit. You can do things like HIIT. So HIIT is high intensity interval training. What does that mean? It means that you do something for a short period of time. So you might do running or being on a bike, know, stationary bike, and you just do it for a short period of time. You do it for 30 seconds, but you really go hard out.

to 90 % of your capacity. And then you have a break and then you do that again. So you're looking at like 30 seconds rest for a bit, 30 seconds rest for a bit. Now, the thing about HIIT is you don't have to do it for very long to really get some benefits from it. And...

There are lots of programs that you can do. So I would say to my clients, you know, go and do a seven minute workout. That's basically what the seven minute workouts are. Most of them are doing some hit and they take eight minutes, but what you're not doing is maintaining high stress levels on your body for a long period of time. So you actually get quite a lot of benefit from doing hit in terms of cardiovascular fitness. Then you do for say example, running for half an hour. And I tell you what, 10 minutes of hit is much easier than 30 minutes of running. But obviously it depends if running is the thing.

Dr Orlena (12:57.829)
that really lights you up then obviously go and do running. So you've got hit and you've got another thing called sit which stands for

Dr Orlena (13:21.451)
sprint interval training. Now you might say, okay, what's the difference? Okay, they're very similar, but they are slightly different. With sit sprint interval training, what you're doing is again, you're doing something really quick for 30 seconds, but then you're resting for longer. And when you do that bit for 30 seconds, what you really want to be doing is as maximum as possible. So you go all out for about 30 seconds, and then you rest for a minute and a half, two minutes until your body basically goes back again. And then you go and do it again.

so that each time you do it your body is

recovered and can really give it your all. Now both hit and sit have lots of benefits in terms of they're super easy to fit into a workout and they give you a good workout in a short period of time. And the other thing they don't do is really, as I say, push your cortisol levels up super, super high over a long period of time. Now just as a side note on cortisol levels, cortisol being your stress hormone, yes, when you are exercising, you are pushing your cortisol levels up and you are

putting stress on your body. But what you are also doing is decreasing your baseline stress. Now, stress is one of those things which...

It's multifaceted, it's super complicated. And when I look at my life and think, how can I decrease the amount of stress in my life? I look at the big stresses in my life, which basically are my kids and their big emotions. They are all teenagers and they get upset about things super easily. That is a lot of stress. Like you don't think it's very much, but it still pushes my cortisol levels up. So for me, when I think about, okay, how do I want to decrease my stress levels? That's where I want to be working on.

Dr Orlena (15:06.551)
rather than on changing my exercise routine, which works for me.

Okay, there's another form of exercise called pylometric exercises. You may think, what on earth are these? Now, these are things that include jumping and burpees, things like that. And they are really good for what they call explosive exercise. So what is the benefit of these? Well, jumping and doing different jumps are really helpful for women and bone density. So getting in some jumping during your week is a really good thing to do. Now, sometimes these are

incorporated into HIIT exercises. Like, you know, if you go and do a seven minute workout, personally, I do use the Apple Plus exercise app, but there are loads of them out there. And sometimes they will put these exercises into those HIIT workouts. Otherwise you can just get two or three and do them like just doing some simple jumps. Some of them are.

much easier than others. So simple jumping, much easier. Jumping up onto a stool, much more difficult. And remember, one of our objectives is we don't want to injure ourselves. So if you look at all of these polymetric exercises as a big group,

you are more likely to injure yourself on those if you are doing something beyond your capabilities. Like if you go from being totally sedentary to trying to jump up and down on a step, you're gonna hurt yourself. So you need to be in that position where you might start with lunges or just jumping up and down on the spot. But again, a super easy thing that you can work into your routine. And then on top of that, so we've got hit, we've got sit, we've got polymetric.

Dr Orlena (16:47.573)
then we've got other things. we've got weight training as well. Let's think about weight training. So weight training is where you are really going to build up your muscles. Now the thing about cardiovascular, whether you're doing swimming or running or anything like that, obviously you are using your muscles. So you are using your muscle over a period of time, but what you're not doing is growing strength in your muscle. Now, everybody always says to me, swimming is not a resistance exercise. You aren't going to grow your muscle. Now I have been swimming. Now I do a lot of

of So I swim basically minimum four times a week, maximum seven times a week during the year. And I swim for like normally around an hour, sometimes a little bit less, sometimes a little bit more. So a lot of swimming. And I have noticed that I do have stronger shoulder muscles and I don't find that surprising. But the point is, if I wanted to build my shoulder muscles, I would be much better putting that time into

Weight lifting now my aim isn't to get shot strong shoulder muscles. I enjoy swimming I do swimming because it's something that I really It lights me up basically in the way that I like going to the gym But I don't get the same sort of like yeah, I really enjoy that from going to the gym So my goal is not to build up my soul shoulders Therefore I swim if I really wanted to build up my shoulders. I would be much better going to the gym

So doing some exercise is gonna give you some benefit to your muscles. Like it's much better to be moving than to be totally sedentary. If you don't use your muscles at all, obviously they're going to get smaller and smaller and smaller. So any kind of exercise is like a little tick. But if you want to do big tick growing your muscles and perhaps you're in your 60s or 70s and you know that your muscles have basically got smaller,

You now want to grow them. Yes, you can do that. You're perfectly capable of doing that, but you you've got a bit of work to do because there's a 20 year gap from being 40 to being 60 where you haven't done any of this work. Now you can go to the gym. Going to the gym is fun.

Dr Orlena (18:59.595)
actually and it's relatively easy as well and I know that a lot of people have this idea that oh my goodness the gym is full of people who are 16 year old boys or basically men well I would say in my experience that's not true I do go to the gym and yes I know my 16 year old son goes to the gym he goes at a totally different time to me because he goes in the evening and I suspect in the evening it is for more full of young men I go in the morning when my son is at school so he can't go

to the gym and there are other women in the gym and there are elderly women in the gym there's one particular elderly woman who goes to the gym because she had a stroke and she's building up her strength at the gym so it's not as scary as you think my recommendation is to go

either with a friend to begin with, or sometimes, you know, gyms will have somebody who will show you around. So get somebody to show you around and think about the exercises that you are going to do. So what exercises are you going to do? Now, if you want to build up your muscle, if you're a woman,

over 50. Now I'm going to reference a podcast that I listened to by Dr. Stacey Sim. Dr. Stacey Sim is a exercise physiologist and she really specializes in women's exercise and really looks at the studies that are out there and basically saying, Hey, why aren't women ever included in these, in these studies? So a lot of studies are done on young men in their eight who are 18 to 25 and really they aren't very relevant to women. So that's basically what she has

dedicated her life to. Now the particular podcast that I listened to was by Dr. Andrew Huberman. I think his name is Andrew, but Dr. Huberman and he has a big podcast. He's a neurologist from Stanford University and his podcast here has so many interesting podcast episodes, but they're all super, super long. They're like two hours.

Dr Orlena (21:00.265)
and he really dives deep into a topic, which is very, very interesting, but obviously quite time consuming. And sometimes you end up getting sucked in and thinking, this is really great, but doesn't really answer the question that I have about this particular topic. So I will leave a link in the show notes to the podcast that Dr. Stacy Sims did on Dr. Huberman's podcast last year. And it is a really interesting thing, a podcast to...

to listen to. Now what she said is if you are in your 50s and above, what you really want to be doing is lifting heavy weights for a much shorter period of time.

So you want to be going for about five reps rather than say 10 reps. So this morning I went to the gym and I changed where I did. I went for like a weight up and instead of aiming to do eight to 10 reps, I went for five reps. So really high, heavy weights, lifting heavy, which is different if you are younger. If you're younger, you want to be lifting slightly less weights, but doing it for a longer period of time.

Now, what kind of exercises can you do? You can go to the gym and you can use those machines. The thing about the machines is that they isolate one particular muscle group. So you might go and you might, I don't know, do the leg extension and flexion one. And what you're doing is you are exercising your thighs. You're much better off doing something called a composite exercise, which actually...

exercises all. So think about a deadlift. A deadlift is when you pick up a heavy weight, which could be heavy dumbbells or it could be a bar, and you bend down and you pick it up. And when you're doing that, you're using your legs, you're using your back, and you're using your arms. So composite exercises are much more efficient and also they do all parts of your body. You want to be making sure that you...

Dr Orlena (22:57.419)
If you're looking after your muscles, you want to be looking after all of your muscles, your arms, your legs, your abdomen, and your back. So all parts of your body. So some composite exercises that I do, I do deadlifts and squats and lunges. I do one called a farmer's walk where you just get heavy weights and you just walk. So those composite exercises, and there's lots of different ones, but they're using all parts of your body as opposed to using the machines. Now, if you're a bodybuilder, like my son, who is 16, I say bodybuilder. I don't mean he's,

like 16 somebody who's interested in bodybuilding should we say then going and using those machines if you if that's what you want to do and you've got time to do that then that's perfectly fine. Okay we seem to have covered quite a lot so gym, weights, building up your muscles there are other ways to build up your muscles too so for example if you do something like Pilates you are using your body weight

to strengthen it. You're basically using yourself as a weight. And there have also been studies that show that you could do something more gentle like Tai Chi. My husband does Tai Chi. Tai Chi is a really low cortisol level, just relax and do gentle exercise. But surprisingly, there are a lot of studies that show that...

Tai Chi is really, really beneficial. there was another benefit that we didn't put in our list of benefits, and that's balance as well. Being able to maintain your balance later on into life is super useful because so many people, their demise is triggered by a fall. And if you can avoid that fall by having good balance, by stopping yourself from falling, you stop that demise. So what contributes to balance? Strength.

being able to catch yourself, things like that. So Tai Chi is another exercise that is really super beneficial. Now, my husband's Tai Chi cheater says, it's like laying down a sheet of paper. Like every time you exercise, it doesn't really feel like much, but you put a sheet of paper down and you do another sheet of paper and you do another sheet of paper and another sheet of paper. And after a year, two years, five years, you've got a really solid wedge, know, chunk of paper.

Dr Orlena (25:13.407)
which is now very, very strong.

Now, I personally would love to do Tai Chi. I just don't have it in my routine at the moment. So before COVID, I was going to Tai Chi on Friday mornings. Unfortunately, due to COVID, the teacher no longer does that class on Friday morning. He does it in the evening. And my husband goes in the evening and I stay at home and look after the kids. Now I get loads of other exercise in, so that's just where we are right now. And at some stage, I would love to start going back to Tai Chi and to yoga. I don't do very much yoga.

Dr Orlena (27:07.891)
Okay, let's put this all together and think about you and what you need to do for your life. Now, I think one big change that I just want to point out to people is the human body is not used to being sedentary. If we look at history,

Throughout history, we have been really active. We've either been poor people who worked in the fields and they were, you know, working all day, moving their bodies all day. It may be that they had a rest, but basically you're just moving all day. Or even if you're a rich person, you were still riding on a horse to be able to get to where you were. So the vast majority of people were doing movement, movement, movement. Obviously not everybody, but most people were doing movement throughout the day.

really interesting book that I think just to give you a glimpse into this is Laurie Lee. Now, Laurie Lee was an English author in the 1920s and he wrote a series of books called Cider with Rosie and he wrote another one called As I Walked Out One Midsummer Day. Now, it's a trilogy of books and it really is interesting from a historical point of view. He then walks to Spain and he walks all around Spain but you know he spends his day he's just like I'm gonna walk from the Cotswolds to London and then I'm gonna walk around Spain because why? Well because that was

to the transport that they had nowadays if he'd come, he'd just catch a bus and spend some time here. He said, no, I'm gonna walk around the whole time. And interestingly, in one of the chapters, I remember him saying...

I set off, I had a few dates in my hand, and that was basically the amount of food that he had. So thinking about how things have changed, he's like, I've got a few dates, that's enough energy to keep me going until I find some more food at some stage in the day. We would never be like that now. We would be like, I've packed my snacks and I've got my water and all of this stuff, and I've got my emergency snacks and I've got some money in case there's a restaurant. You know, like life is just so different now. Whereas our bodies haven't changed that much. Our body is still totally prepared.

Dr Orlena (29:11.661)
to go and walk and walk and walk or be active, but that's not where we are now. And that is one of the reasons why we find ourselves with so many health problems. So how are you going to create your routine? Now,

You want it to be enjoyable. You also want to be able to do it without thinking about it. And you know the without thinking bit is all about habits. When it is a habit, you no longer think about it. I don't think about exercising other than, hooray, I get to go to the swimming pool tomorrow. I get to go to the gym. Like it's just part of my routine in the same way that brushing my teeth is or cooking food for my kids. It's just part of what I do. So.

I recommend to everybody that you have an exercise that lights you up, that you really, really enjoy doing. Now, you may not know what that is now. You may know what it is. I've spoken to people who say, for example, yeah, I love playing tennis, but I never played tennis. Okay, so stop your excuses and just go and do it. Make it happen. Of course you can make it happen. If you have an exercise that you love doing, unless there is some reason like an injury that you can no longer do it, go and

make it happen and enjoy doing it again.

it may be that you don't know what your exercise is. Now it can be anything. It can be dancing, it can be hiking, it can be, I don't know, roller skating or playing a sport. Think about, if you don't know, think about what is available to you and have a think about, what does my community offer? Do I want to do something by myself or do I want to do something in a group? A little bit of self-awareness. Are you somebody who...

Dr Orlena (30:59.089)
really will commit to other people. And what I mean by that is if you've made a commitment to somebody else, I'll meet you at this time, you're gonna show up. As opposed to if you say to yourself, yeah, I'm gonna go and do that and I don't do it, then you're less likely to do it. You're less likely to turn up. So if you are somebody who works well in a group of people and you like that support and you think, do you know what? Actually having some friends who do this same thing is going to be fun.

then think about doing things in a team. And I have found that even just going to the swimming pool, so I'll tell you my routine, basically in the winter I go to the swimming pool, I go to swimming training three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday at eight o'clock, and then on Tuesday and Thursday I go to the gym, and in those slots I go to the gym and I do weights.

I also cycle to the swimming pool, so that's my sort of like warmup. And then at the weekend, I cycle to the beach and I go swimming normally twice depending on what the weather is like because we're swimming in the sea. Otherwise, I also walk normally.

like 45 minutes a day, I'll go for a gentle walk in the afternoon with my husband. And if I meet my friends, so at least once a week, I go for a cycle ride with a friend, which is like, it's not about exercise. It's about meeting my friend and doing something which previously we used to sit and drink wine. And actually I don't want to sit and drink wine. I want to get some movement into my body, but I'm not.

thinking that's going to really push my VO max or anything like that. It's not going to help me be more fit. It's just a little bit more movement in my day. So start small.

Dr Orlena (32:36.261)
Set yourself a goal, decide what you're going to do. If you don't want to do anything big, start with a seven minute workout. A seven minute workout, the app is free. You could do it in 10 minutes. You could do it before your shower in the morning unless there's some reason like you've got young kids and you just can't do it. You could get up 10 minutes earlier and do it, but just have a think about it. And...

Do that for a little bit, then do something else for a little bit and then do something else. So it's not about going, right, next week I've got this amazing super schedule that I'm gonna do. If you do that, you're just going to fall to pieces. So have a think about your long-term plan. This is gonna be my exercise that lights me up. I want to build up to here. How am I going to build up to here? Now.

Dr Orlena (33:25.023)
When you are setting goals, you are much better setting a realistic goal and pushing yourself a little bit than setting a super unrealistic goal and giving up. What do I mean by this? So say you're gonna do a seven minute workout and you say, okay, I am gonna do a seven minute workout seven days a week. Yep, definitely gonna do it. But you're not because you're busy and realistically, it's about three times a week.

So if you set your goal for seven times a week and you do one, you're just gonna feel demoralized and like, it doesn't work. Whereas if you set your goal for two times a week and you do three times a week, you're gonna feel motivated and you're gonna feel like, yep, I've got this. Let's solidly get to three times a week and then if I want to, I can add in a fourth time a week. So the best type of goal is the goal that stretches you a little bit but doesn't overwhelm you such that you're not going to do something. So be realistic in setting your goals because you

want to give up just because you feel like a failure.

The other thing I should say to you is I have a Strava group. Do you know what Strava is? If you think that support is something that is really helpful, I have a Strava group. So I'll leave a link for that. And Strava is a way of being able to see other people's exercises. So if you have a watch, sports watch, and it doesn't matter what type of sports watch, you can start a Strava, you can have a Strava account. And basically you join a group and you can see everybody else's activities in that group, which is really useful for getting a group of people

and celebrating each other and going, yep, hooray, motivating you and going, you did this, well done. Now, obviously all the different types of sports watches have their own. So Apple has their own and Garmin has its own, but you can't, if you've got a group of people who have different watches, the way to connect it really is through this app called Strava. So I will leave a link to that group and if you want to join, you're more than welcome to join.

Dr Orlena (35:20.639)
So I hope that has answered all your questions about exercise and how you can start and just give you a bit of thinking about like, what are some of the things that I can do? In my mind, the best way to keep going at an exercise is to find something that you actually enjoy, whether it's the activity that you enjoy or the surrounding bits that you enjoy. So the surrounding bits that you enjoy might be the community. So I didn't mention that basically when I go to the swimming pool, I now know loads of people at the swimming pool

because we go at the same time. I've made, over the years that I've been going, I've made friends with those people just basically by being there and like I've done activities with them. So I did something called the Onco Swim last year and we're doing again this year. It's a big challenge swim. We do 30 kilometers in the sea between five of us. So I will probably do between 10 and 15 kilometers and we raise money for charity.

but that didn't happen the first day I walked in to the swimming pool and that was years and years and years ago. So it's a long-term project but it's a project that you should enjoy, that should light you up, that should give you energy and help keep you strong and flexible and healthy into old age. Okay my friends, I hope that was helpful. Bye-bye.