Today – Are Brits exercising more during lockdown?
How lockdown is affecting health
How is lockdown affecting your health and wellbeing?
Well, I don’t know about you but I assumed because I could not get to the gym I would be exercising less during the lockdown. I usually go 3 times a week and have a good workout. On the other days, I tended to walk.
Because karate and tennis and football are cancelled and because they are no longer walking the 3 miles round trip to school I also assumed my kids would be exercising less.
But is this really the case?
How healthy are we all being in lockdown?
Our life has changed dramatically over the past couple of months and lockdown is preventing so many health and fitness outlets for us and of course, snacking is so very easy! Are we all going to be overweight and unfit at the end of all this?
Well, my kids walk and use our exercise bike every day, I am learning tai chi and walk my mile and lift weights.
We are all still moving – but is this typical?
Myprotein decided to research how our health habits across the UK have changed during the lockdown.
So, are Brits exercising more during lockdown? Let’s consider the research …
Myprotein commissioned a YouGov survey of over 2,800 Brits to look into whether people are exercising more, eating more healthily during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Well, I don’t know about you but I am very pleasantly surprised by the results of this survey. It turns out that there is an increase of nearly 6 million extra Brits exercising daily.
6 million. How bizarre it takes us to be locked in to get us moving.
It is believed this is because we have more free time than usual – whatever the reason it is certainly a good thing from a health perspective.
Online workouts
I am so thankful for tech – enabling me to work from home, catch up with friends and, in my case, learn tai chi during the lockdown. I am not alone in finding ways to workout online though. There is a mammoth 239% increase in Google searches for the word workout from April 2019 to April 2020.
The problem with sleep
Despite the frequency of exercise is up, sadly the impact on sleep has not been so positive. In fact, nearly ⅔ of Brits have reported a change in their usual sleeping patterns under lockdown, with over half saying it had a negative effect on them. This could be due to lack of routine or worries ( of which, of course, we all have plenty)
Where you live affects things
London is the most stressed region apparently but here in the East Midlands, we are apparently the most relaxed. If you fancy having a look at your region and how lockdown has affected emotional wellbeing there you can pop on over and take a look here at the full research report on how lockdown is affecting our health
I hope you have found this post on Are Brits exercising more during lockdown? to be interesting. You might also like my post on tips for high morale during lockdown how to cope with anxiety during lockdown
