Title:How to Get Healthier: The Laziest Mans Guide

Introduction:
Do you enjoy sleeping? Do you enjoy getting the most out of doing as little effort
as possible? Is your bed your best friend but you want to get healthier? Then look
no further! Welcome to my blog and enjoy your stay!
Hellooo there peers, readers and procrastinators alike, welcome to my blog and I
hope you enjoy reading through my blog post (dont worry Ill try to keep you all
entertained throughout this to make your experience a lot better)
Before GENM0703, my health and lifestyle wasnt the greatestgreat. I had trouble
eating on time, and when I did eat Id eat a complete mess of different foodsit
was a complete mess and dont get me started on the midnight snacks (my god
does chips taste amazing at 11:30pm when watching a movie on a lazy
Saturday); so its safe to say that my diet (consisting of mostly carbohydrates)
wasnt that great. Although, I did exercise above the recommended amount,
going for a run, cycling and playing social badminton, I felt that my diet wasnt in
sync with what I did. Physically, I felt my health wasnt bad, but neither was it
good. Mentally, I could probably say the same. As I am aspiring to transfer my
courses, I would consider myself a little put-down by the results Ive achieved in
comparison to the effort Ive put in and before this course I was incredibly
stressed. I guess this summed up my mental health regarding uni pretty nicely:

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Then, I began GENM0703 and I found myself being more interested and more
aware of the choices I was making in order to improve my mental and physical
health. After taking the assessments, I found myself very surprised in the results.
Starting from the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) to analyse

my physical activity in the past 7 days; my MET minutes was very high when
compared to the amount of time I spend being sedentary; having a moderate
level of physical activity yet being sedentary 62.5% of the time. After this, was
the DASS 21 test, measuring depression anxiety and stress [1] (Oei, T., et al.
(2013). Honestly, I was incredibly surprised with the results, as I consider myself
a pretty stressed person, having normal depression and stressed levels and only
moderate anxiety was incredibly strange. Also, my 24 hour recall of diet showed
that I was very close to getting the correct servings!
So with the results I have had, I guess Im quite fortunate. I truly sympathise with
you who are struggling under the workload so in a way to maybe help you cope,
here is the lifestyle program Im following to try to maintain the results I currently
have.
Goal 1: Try to get 5 hours of exercise a week
This may seem a lot at first to some of you and a rare few it being incredibly
easy for you to achieve, but, from the standpoint of an incredibly lazy person
who enjoys nothing more than being like this:

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This is definitely for you!
Personally, I chose this goal because its realistic and attainable. There are 7
days of a week and Im at university for two of those and Im fortunate enough to
not have to work; bottomline? no excuses! As I am brought up in a fairly Asian
upbringing, the value of money is something I have understood very well so it is
no surprise that a motivation to get out and get active is wasted money. So I
decided to sign up to a gym to motivate me to exercise! I really recommend this
to you all if you too are a bit anxious or stressed as regular exercise releases
endorphins into the body (Thoren, Peter et al. 1990) [2]; a feel good hormone!

Perhaps youll ask: But what if I dont want to pay to go to the gym?
Then maybe my next goal can apply to you!
Goal 2: Reduce Sedentary Behaviour by 2 hours each day
If you like to take small stepping stones to increase your physical activity, then
this might a goal you may want to go for. As sedentary behaviour has been
found to be independently associated with poor health [3] (Parry, S, et al.
2013) its not a stretch of the imagination to try to reduce it as much as possible.
How Im approaching it is by doing 20 push-ups every 30 minutes!

This all leads to my last goal and perhaps the hardest one to achieve for any of
us students;
Goal 3: Staying on top of University work by studying at least 3 hours a
day
Perhaps for som- (who am I kidding) ALL of us, studying is the worst part of our
day. For me, I certainly do not like analysing businesses and telling them how
they can cut costs or learning about how previous economists with out-dated
opinions you get the idea right?
But the steps to attain this goal are much simpler than I thought. Following my
two other goals and researching a little bit, Ive discovered that exercise
stimulates brain regions that control memory functions [4] (Harvard, 2013)! So
weve killed two birds with one stone! As long as I keep exercising, my studying
wont be like this:

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Progress:

From the 2 week program, so far Ive been successful in the first two goals, but
the third one is a lot harder to crack. Getting exercise and breaking up my
sedentary behaviour has been a lot easier because Ive been motivated by this
course and by being consciously aware of the lifestyle decisions I have been
making recently. But the last goal has been harder to achieve due to my
procrastination, or if youre not familiar, putting off ones intentions [5] (Stead,
S. et al 2010). To overcome this, Ive downloaded a program called SelfControl
that locks websites that I want to go to during studying time. And Ive felt like
Ive got a lot more work done!
The Future?
I think, with this program, Ill be able to achieve my goals besides the ones
above and my future would be very much different than it once was. Before
GENM0703 I think my future wouldve been a lot more clouded and more
challenging, but with a plan that is being applied proactively to my lifestyle, itll
be much more organised and Id be a lot happier by the end of it. If I ever
achieve the ultimate goal of mine; transferring courses, Ill know for sure that
this course is to thank for getting my life in order!
Alas, comes the end this post, I hope youve enjoyed reading as I have writing! I
hope your plans have been coming along well and I truly wish you the best for
the rest of the semester! Feel free to drop a comment or feedback :)
Word Count: 1066Due to my incredibly long hours of sedentary behaviour, I felt
more lethargic and unmotivated to do work; and if youre a typical uni student
like me, being on top of uni work is like winning a goal medal.
Nevertheless, it was a really curious conundrum. It made very little sense for me
to have a moderate amount of exercise yet, I dont feel like I have the energy to
do the things I want namely studying for upcoming assessments, or, Ill admit,
this blog post. So I did a little research on the IPAQ test!
For those who, like me, had no idea what the IPAQ was, I found a really good
definition of the IPAQ test.
The International Physical Activity Questionaire (IPAQ) assesses physical activity
in metabolic equivalents, using 4 dimensions: occupation, transportation,
household activities and leisure-time physical activity (American Journal of
Therapeutics, 2013)[1]
So essentially, were looking at our daily go-abouts and seeing whether were not
getting a lot of physical activity!
Bibliography:
[1] Oei, T. P. S., Sawang, S., Goh, Y. W. and Mukhtar, F. (2013), Using the
Depression Anxiety Stress Scale 21 (DASS-21) across cultures.
International Journal of Psych, 48: 10181029.
doi: 10.1080/00207594.2012.755535

[2] Thoren, P., Floras J., Hoffman, P and Seals, Douglas. (1990)
Endorphins and exercise: physiological mechanisms and clinical implications.
Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 22(4), pp 417-428
[3] Parry, S, Straker,L (2013) The contribution of office work to sedentary
behaviour associated risk
[4] Harvard Medical School (2013) Regular exercise releases brain
chemicals key for memory, concentration and mental sharpness.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/regular-exercise-releases-brainchemicals-key-for-memory-concentration-and-mental-sharpness Accessed:
11/04/2015 3:01pm
[5] Stead, S; Shanahan, M J; Neufeld, Richard W.J (2010) Ill go to therapy,
eventually: Procrastination, stress and mental health.
www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/41207/ill-go-therapy-eventuallystead-shanahan-neufeld-2010.pdf Accessed 11/04/2015, 3:21pm