Can Creativity Kill? - Kathy Shell, Artist.

Can Creativity Kill? 04/24/2010

Are your art activities sedentary?

Do not Allow A Sedentary Job to Kill You.

Art does not have to be sedentary. You can have a balanced, healthy, slim and creative life. I intend to make this creative and fit, lifestyle, my future. I want to see other creative people maintain their health so they can do their best creative work well into their advanced years.

People who sit at a desk for six hours a day are almost twice as likely to be overweight. I would spend six hours a day in sedentary creative work and know the need to ensure that this does not cause health problems and obesity.

I m learning to balance, my love of a creative sedentary job,(my creative skills of writing and painting), with fitness training.

First, I had to decrease the amount of time I spent in my sedentary work as my fitness, was gained slowly. Initially by gentle movement in water, not a huge calorie burner, so I needed to do a lot of that exercise to make any appreciable difference in my energy expenditure. This meant a lot less time available for sedentary creativity.

Then I moved on to walking, again, from walking to weight work outs, then full body work outs as I gained strength and flexibility and now all of a sudden I find I can jog. This is the breakthrough I need as I can now allocate an hour a day to a huge calorie burn aerobic exercise session. I combine this with healthy portion controlled eating and offset some of the lowered metabolism my creative, sedentary lifestyle had been doing to me. It took me three years and almost three months to increase my fitness to this level where I know I can return to a lot of the sedentary lifestyle of the writer and painter, and be able to balance it with enough aerobic exercise that I will not find myself gaining weight during an intense painting or writing session again.

All I need to do is to remember to take care of myself physically and not just my inner passion for my art.

Small but important ways I can nurture the physical me is in taking time to use night creams, see a hair stylist a little more often, make sure I have good quality runners and clothes suitable for jogging.

Here is a great article in Sparkpeople, with tips to avoid allowing a sedentary job to cause you to gain weight.