“The key is doing something that you enjoy. You don’t need to go to a gym, or go to an exercise class, it’s about movement.”
Sharon, 50, Type 2 Diabetes
Here are Sharon’s thoughts on KiActiv® Health
“I have just completed the 12-week programme with KiActiv®. When I received a letter from my surgery asking me if I wanted to join I was really intrigued and thought what a good idea it sounded so I had no hesitation in signing up!
My first session with Abby, one of KiActiv®’s mentors was really informative and I was really keen to get going. I soon received my ‘Band’ to wear, like a fitness tracker style watch. You have to log on to their website but Abby talked me through it all and it was really straightforward. In fact, even my Dad who is 75 and really not good with anything like this, found it easy to use with Abby’s help! (He was on the programme too). You can then, Bluetooth daily, to the website and it will then display, in a graph, your activity.
For the first week you just do what you always do, whatever that may be. This gives KiActiv® a baseline of what you would normally do each day. For me, the key thing which stood out and the thing I found most shocking was the amount of time I was inactive during the day (i.e. at work). I could see these big gaps in the graph where I wasn’t moving! I really found this quite a shock, not only did I have high blood sugar levels, but I also have a long-standing back issue and I know that sitting for long periods of time were not good for that. However, I clearly wasn’t doing much about it.
So, this was the main goal for me, to try and move about more during the course of the day. That meant me setting reminders in my calendar on my computer at work and also asking my lovely team mate to give me a nudge if she had noticed I’d not moved in a while! It really is quite amazing how quickly even 1 hour goes when I am at work and so it is so easy to have been sat for a few hours before moving. I set reminders every 45 mins. I didn’t go far, just a walk round the building, sometimes up a flight of stairs.
Starting to see the difference on the graphs is really encouraging. I then decided that I needed to incorporate physical activity into my life again. Due to my ongoing back problem, I’d really not done much, just Pilates. But there was no reason why I couldn’t walk/do some light jogging, hula hooping (such good fun). This was really good and I loved logging on to the personalised online dashboard after and seeing how high some of the lines had got on the graph (indicating vigorous intensity activity). You can tag on the graphs what the activity was that you were doing at that time and then you can ‘plan to improve’ on any gaps you may have.
I continued to speak with Abby and she was always so encouraging and supportive. This really helped.
At the same time, I started to eat healthier as I was determined to get the sugar levels down. Towards the end of the 12 weeks, my sugar levels are vastly improved, I am not quite at normal levels, but I shall continue to work at that. At the end of the programme, you get to keep the band and can still log on to see the graphs etc. It is really scary hearing you have high blood sugar levels but the fact that Type 2 diabetes is reversible means you can do something about it.
This programme gave me the kick I needed, and I would encourage anyone who gets the opportunity to do it, to sign up. You have nothing to lose (except maybe a bit of weight and some unwanted high sugar levels!). For me, seeing on that graph, long periods of time where I wasn’t moving was awful.
At the end of the 12 weeks, my son and I took part in a pretty muddy 5k race for Cancer Research. We didn’t run all the way round, mostly because the temperature that day was extremely hot, but I got round without feeling completely out of puff! And that made me feel really chuffed with myself.”
Sharon’s Story
At the beginning of her 12-week KiActiv® Health programme, after looking at her baseline activity, Sharon quickly realised how much of her day she was spending sedentary, commenting “it’s so easy to sit still for a long time without realising, it’s quite frightening really.” And, “It’s the actuality of seeing the graph for me, this is what’s helping me, seeing these periods of time where I’ve barely moved, and I find it quite shocking. To see it like that and then to see it when it perks up its really fab.”
After this realisation, Sharon increased her activity through going to yoga, jogging on the treadmill, alongside getting up from her desk at job, every hour to increase her level of movement. She told her mentor that she enjoys the fact that she can log on to the KiActiv® platform and keep looking at her data – making her happy, as she knows once she’s back in routine.
At her last session with KiActiv®, Sharon commented that she now has better awareness of her activity and that “the key is doing something that you’re enjoying, you don’t need to go to a gym, or go to an exercise class, it’s just the movement and walking”
During Sharon’s 12-week KiActiv® Health programme, she improved across 4 dimensions of physical activity, increasing her moderate activity by 16.3%, spending 70% of her programme above her baseline levels and notably increasing her moderate bouts by 41.4% in the space of 12 weeks.
