The reason exercise takes more effort when you’re unfit or overweight.

(and why that shouldn’t matter).

Are you familiar with the couch potato conundrum? Whilst nestled deep into sofa cushions like a sloth in a bed of cecropia leaves, the couch potato repeats the same four thoughts:

1) ‘I need to exercise.’

2) ‘I don’t exercise because it takes too much effort.’

3) ‘I know that if I started exercising, then it wouldn’t take as much effort.’

4) ‘I need to exercise’.

It’s a circular problem, a non-starter, the ball and chain that keeps sedentary people anchored to their sofa.

I empathise because exercise does take more effort for the unfit and overweight.

I’ll explain.

When we exercise, we expend a lot of energy over a short period. Muscles demand blood and nutrients, reducing the energy stocks available to our internal organs and brain. Sooner or later, fatigue and exhaustion kick in to protect our bodies from the harmful effects of excessive energy expenditure.

But when we’re overweight, we use more energy moving heavier limbs, accelerating the onset of fatigue.

During exercise, our hearts also pump blood around the body for oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange, nutrient supply and waste removal. But the less fit we are, the slower this vital movement of nutrients occurs. And so, our nervous system accelerates the onset of fatigue to protect our internal organs.

It’s a similar story when we’re ill; the body needs extra energy to fight off infection and induces the emotion of fatigue to prevent us from wasting precious, life-saving energy.

So, if we’re overweight, unfit, or just feeling under the weather, then fatigue kicks in sooner and harder during exercise.

But what about before exercise? What about when the couch potato is still sat on the sofa?

In a journal titled ‘Exercise and Fatigue’ published by the University of Groningen, sports psychologists Wim Ament and Gijsbertus Verkerke explain how “many diseases [including obesity] produce a change of mind-set before exercise… creating sensations of…