Here is it my friends, the results of the Health & Fitness Survey for Women. What survey? Well, a few weeks back, I created a simple online fitness survey. The goal is to better understand the needs and challenges of my client – or hopefully soon-to-be clients. See, I’m a fledging health and fitness coach. To be effective, I need to know what my clients’ issues and challenges are – not mine.
The anonymous survey contained 15 questions asked a series of questions about their current exercise habits, diet history, and challenges with both.
I provided a link to the survey in several places. First on my Fit, 50 and Fabulous Facebook page. Next, I sent it around to my email list. Finally, I posted it on my personal Facebook page for friends to complete. I got about 35 responses in total, which tell an interesting story.
The Survey Audience
Before I reveal the results, it’s important to note that in posting the link to my Fit, 50 and Fabulous Facebook page and sending it to my email list, I was already targeting my ideal market. Posting it to my personal Facebook page opens it up to a broader audience who may or may not be my target audience. They’re just awesome friends and people I’ve known for years.
Now, on to the survey results!
Age Ranges
Standard survey question here. My target was women 50 or older, but I included an age range from 40 – 70+, broken down into 5-year increments. The top responding age ranges were 50 – 54, 40 – 44, and 55 – 59.
Exercise, Modality, and Duration
More than 82% of total respondents said they exercise, which is awesome! Regardless of age, getting regular exercise has profound benefits for your overall health.
By far, walking was the most popular form of exercise. Sixty-five percent of respondents reported that this was their primary source of exercise. This makes sense since walking is the easiest, cheapest, and most convenient form of exercise available. Weight or resistance training, hiking, and biking rounded out the top choices, while yoga and running tied for fourth place.
For those who do exercise, 60% of people reported exercising 4 or more times per week. Following this was the low range at only 1 – 2 times per week. Nearly 66% said when they do exercise, it’s for 30 – 60 minutes or longer and depends on the type of exercise, such as hiking or biking.
What prevents people from exercising?
This is where the survey results became interesting, at least for me. For those that don’t exercise, the number one reason by an overwhelming majority was due to achy joints and mobility issues. This is surprising, but not shocking.
Although not defined by this survey, research shows the number one cause of joint pain and mobility issues is arthritis. Arthritis is the swelling and tenderness of one or more of your joints, the symptoms of which are joint pain and stiffness. Osteoarthritis is the most common type, which typically worsens with age. Osteoarthritis, typically caused by overuse and general wear and tear, can be managed…by staying active and maintaining a healthy weight. Clearly, this presents a chicken and egg scenario; you don’t exercise because your joints ache, yet you need to exercise to prevent your joints from aching.
The reason for lack of weight or resistance training and lower end results of exercise frequency among women may be revealed in the number two response of what prevents people from exercising: “don’t know what kind of exercise to do.” I get this. There is soooo much information out there on exercise programs that its hard to cut through the noise to figure out exactly ‘what’ you should be doing. Information overload and analysis paralysis are both paralyzing.
Why do you exercise?
When asked why people exercise, the number one answer was to feel better physically. This is followed by exercising to lose weight. Again, the second answer was surprising, but not shocking. While exercise does have tremendous health benefits, exercise alone will not help you lose weight. “You can’t exercise our way out of a bad diet” is something I’ve said more than once. The only way to lose weight is to be in a calorie deficit, meaning you take in less calories than you body needs. If you are consistently consuming 500+ calories over what your body needs, which is not hard to do at all, the calorie burned through exercise bring the two into balance.
The good news is the same number of people who exercise to lose weight, do so to feel better mentally. Regular exercise releases endorphins, a feel-good hormone that also acts to reduce your perception of pain. Physical activity also releases dopamine and serotonin, which are also responsible for your mood. It’s no wonder then that people who suffer from depression respond positively to regular exercise since depression has been linked to low levels of serotonin in the brain.
Diet Program Indicators
Over 60% of respondents said they’d followed a diet program such as WW, keto, Jenny Craig, and others. A whopping 76% of those who did follow a program said they were unsuccessful in reaching their weight loss goals. Of those who did reach their goal weight, only 25% said they were unable to maintain their weight loss once they completed the program.
The biggest reasons for not being able maintain their weight lose was either the programs were too hard to maintain for their hectic schedules, or there was an overall lack of consistency. Of all the questions that had an “Other” free form field for personal entries, this one got the most entries. Those entries included statements like:
- There’s a lot of food I don’t really like I’m kind of picky eater
- No willpower and addicted to junk food
- Tired of trying, like trying to quit smoking
- Too regimented
None of this is surprising to me and underscores why the diet industry is a $72 billion dollar a year business. Losing weight has been made to be way more complicated than it needs. What’s more, it doesn’t consistently address the underlying need to build an empowering mindset and habits that elevate lifestyle change above weight loss. Losing weight starts long before any eating plan gets put into place. If you and your environment are not set up to achieve and maintain a healthy weight, your success will always be in jeopardy.
This is further emphasized by the answers to the next question…
What is your biggest challenge when it comes to nutrition and dieting?
The multiple-choice answers to this question gets to the root cause of why healthy eating is a struggle to maintain in the long run. The top 10 answers (out of 17 choices) were:
- Emotional or stress eating
- Sweet tooth
- Snacking when not hungry
- Being consistent
- Eating out too much
- Hectic or busy and unpredictable work/life schedule
- (Tied) Not liking to cook, knowing how, or having the time
- (Tied) Successful practicing self-control
- (Tied) Cravings
- (Tied) Eating large portions
- (Tied) Lack of meal planning
- Don’t know what you should eat
- Accountability
A quick glance at the list reinforces the fact that the psychology of weight loss – what we think, how we feel, our overall awareness of food, the habits we follow, far outpace the science of weight loss. It’s these foundational elements that need the most attention to improve our chances of fundamental change.
What are your biggest age-related health challenges?
I’m not a data scientist, but the results of this Health & Fitness survey show the compounding impacts of a multitude of diet and exercise challenges.
It’s not surprising then, the top two answers to “What are your biggest age-related health challenges?” are (1) achy joints (hip, knees, shoulders, neck, back) and (2) overweight/obesity.
If we’re too achy to exercise, succumb to emotional eating our sweet tooth or snack when we’re not hungry, they lead to obesity and being overweight. It’s a vicious cycle, and breaking the cycle starts with addressing our mindset and habits.
The Magic Wand Question
I like a good magic wand question, but the choice of answers I provided in the survey is the best. Nonetheless, when asked, “If you had a magic wand that would address your nutrition and fitness challenges, how would you use it?” 68% percent of people chose “Never have to diet again; always be at ideal weight”. After that, 28% of people answered “Eat whatever I want and not gain weight.” If you think about it, they could be one in the same question, which is why I said the choice of answers I provided wasn’t the best.
Final Words
So, there you have it. The results of my Health & Fitness Survey for Women over 50. The survey is still live if you want to take it for yourself. It’s 100% anonymous (I don’t collect names or email addresses) and it’s purely for informational purposes.
I had wanted to provide screen shots of the fancy pie charts that the survey creates, but since I had two of the same surveys going to different audiences, I couldn’t combine the results to get the fancy charts. Plus, I suck at using excel, so although I was able to export the answers in a spreadsheet, I couldn’t figure out how to generate charts of the results.
Nevertheless, this survey accomplished its purpose. It gives me an idea of how to better help my clients and develop programs that transcend the mechanics of diet and exercise and get to the root cause of the challenges we all experience.