Suboptimal Exercise Compliance: Common Barriers to an Active Lifestyle and Counseling Strategies to Overcome Them

Adherence to a structured exercise program provides numerous health benefits, including reductions in body weight, fat stores, and blood pressure, improved blood glucose management and lipid/lipoprotein profiles, increased cardiorespiratory fitness, decreased cardiovascular risk, and enhanced psychosocial well-being. Despite these benefits, many individuals find it difficult to comply with a regular exercise program, predisposing them to an increased risk of chronic diseases and other medical conditions. Several barriers to participation in structured exercise, including time and financial constraints, psychosocial factors, and physical limitations, contribute to low adherence rates. Accordingly, health care professionals should use varied counseling strategies to assist their patients in overcoming habitual physical inactivity and our increasingly hypokinetic lifestyle. Motivational interviewing, goal setting, using stages of readiness to change, and identifying physical/psychosocial limitations are effective ways for helping patients to achieve the health and fitness benefits of structured exercise, increased lifestyle physical activity, or both.