Move your Body!

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own, you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Do you sometimes feel like this guy? Especially when you are told you have to stay home, it’s hard to get motivated to do much. And what can you do to exercise or move more when you’re stuck at home? Read on because it’s important to keep moving ya’ll!

We live our entire lives in our bodies—the one and only body God created for us to do his will and work. Unfortunately, we often mistreat this body, and we don’t realize that it affects how well we’re able to live out our God-given purpose. Said differently, we need to have a healthy vessel to best serve the Lord.

“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred and you together are that temple.” 1 Corinthians 3:16-17

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31

I know that many people are quarantined at this point, and it’s definitely easy to sit too much when you are stuck at home. And many of us sit too much in general, especially if we have sedentary jobs. Further, technology such as email, cell phones, online banking and online shopping has increased the time we spend sitting.

But God made us to move our bodies! Long periods of physical inactivity raise your risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, cancer and obesity. I have even heard it said that sitting is the new smoking.

One easy way to combat the health risks of a sedentary lifestyle is to work small bits of exercise into your daily routine. You can do this by focusing on adding just 30 minutes of extra activity into your day, three days a week. You can break it down into smaller segments, too, like in 10-minute intervals. Here are some ideas of what you can do to get more activity into your day.

• Walk for five minutes every two hours
• Get up and walk around or march in place during TV commercials
• Stand or walk around when you’re on the phone
• Do a set or two of push-ups against the kitchen counter
• Use soup cans as dumbbells and do 10 to 20 reps of biceps curls – or my personal favorite, wine bottles
• Stretch periodically through the day
• Perform up to 10 reps of stand-and-sit exercises, where you rise from a chair without using your arms and then sit down again to complete one rep

There are also a ton of good exercise videos that you can access for free to workout at home. Here are some examples below:

Pop Sugar Fitness

• A free YouTube exercise channel that offers fitness tutorials and workouts.

CorePower Yoga

• Free access to a collection of yoga and meditation classes through Core Power on Demand.

Cross Fit at Home

• Provides free access to various workout and nutrition videos to preserve your health at home.

Beachbody on Demand

• There is a monthly fee but this site has a ton of different workouts you can stream including yoga, cardio, weight-training, body weight exercises, etc.

Many gyms/trainers are offering workouts on Facebook Live and YouTube during this time. It’s also a great time to get outside and walk/run or do exercises with hand weights.

Many of us are having a lot of stress and anxiety related to what’s going on in the world. Exercising and moving your body more can help! In addition to helping with your physical health, moving your body more has mental health benefits. Exercise releases chemicals like endorphins and serotonin that improve your mood and sense of well-being. Exercise results in us feeling more energetic throughout the day, sleeping better at night, and feeling more relaxed and positive about ourselves and our lives. It can have a profoundly positive impact on depression, stress, anxiety, ADHD, and more. It even increases the size of the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory. I don’t know about you, but my memory isn’t as good as it used to be, so good to know that exercising helps. In addition, exercise can help us cope with mental and emotional challenges in a healthy way, instead of resorting to alcohol, drugs, food binges or other behaviors that ultimately make symptoms worse.

So, are you convinced yet that it’s important to get moving? If beginning to exercise seems intimidating, don’t despair. As mentioned above, even just a few minutes of physical activity daily is better than none at all. Start with the 10 minutes at various periods throughout the day and increase over time. As exercising becomes habit, you can slowly add extra minutes or try different types of activities.

We need to value and steward God’s gift to us, our bodies!