Living longer is NOT a good selling point

A University of Michigan researcher’s study of the exercise habits of full-time working middle-age women has found that the messages used to motivate people into exercising often focus on the wrong benefits.

Michelle Segar, a Research Investigator for the university’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender, said that being told that exercise is the key to living longer is not a selling point for lots of people. Rather, her study found that those who exercised most did so in order to feel better in their everyday lives.

“Exercising for disease prevention or to age well isn’t essential today, so it gets put on the bottom of the list,” Segar said.

In other words: it’s all about the here and now. Segar said that in order to tempt people into the often daunting world of exercise, it may be beneficial to switch the focus from long-term benefits that seem out of reach, to the more immediately tangible benefits such as feeling and functioning better today.

Source: The International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity

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