In-Person Workshop: No Sweat! A Clinician’s Science-based Guide to Prescribing Sustainable Physical Activity

Workshop Description: The American College of Lifestyle Medicine has been a leader in raising awareness of and developing educational resources that highlight the critical role of lifestyle behaviors in promoting health, longevity and well-being. Physical activity isn’t just one of the pillars of lifestyle medicine, its benefits are considered so potent that exercise has been branded as medicine within healthcare more broadly. Yet, mounting behavioral science suggests that communicating about physical activity in ways that emphasize its medicinal, health-related benefits may be counterproductive for sustained patient motivation and long-term behavior change. This research suggests that conventional approaches to physical activity counseling might unintentionally undermine the very health-promoting outcomes that these efforts aim to achieve. Closing this gap between evidence and practice is critical to empowering patients and improving outcomes. In this workshop, participants will learn the latest research behind this counter-intuitive evidence and what it suggests is a more effective, whole-person approach for counseling patients about physical activity within a lifestyle medicine context. Informed by theory, science, and practice, this workshop integrates research with real-world patient case studies and teaches an easy-to-use, next-generation exercise prescription based on the emerging science about the psychology of exercise adherence. Participants will have an opportunity to practice a novel patient-centered exercise method for use following the workshop. While this physical activity prescription was developed for physicians, it can be used by any lifestyle medicine practitioner, in any setting. Based on an integration of psychology and decision-making research, this prescription method is flexible and “health condition neutral”: it can be used among patients for prevention or to treat distinct chronic conditions.