Stephen and Nikki’s story: ‘Finding the time to do it is hard’

Husband and wife Stephen and Nikki both work in the UK National Health Service (NHS), and both have experienced physical and mental health challenges in the last 10 years. Physical activity has helped improve their wellbeing.

Nikki – I might start swimming again. Running’s been too hard for me, mentally and physically – it often made me feel dreadful. I used to get myself into silly situations – I went from the Couch-to-5k, to a 10k, to a half marathon all within 9 months. I wasn’t doing it because I enjoyed it, I was doing it because it gave me a sense of purpose – I was achieving something. I became obsessed.

It took me a long time to realise it wasn’t a good thing, and I also felt really guilty that running wasn’t something we could do as a family. It was only in February this year, after a spell of not running, that I took a step back and asked, why am I doing this? When I started running three years ago, I did it because I wanted to make myself feel better – not because I wanted to run a half marathon.

Stephen – I guess both of us were fairly active up until about 10 years ago. And then we had kids. It really hits you – it’s a real boom – we had free reign of our lives and time before that, we could do whatever we liked, whenever we liked. But when you have kids, twins in our case, your priorities change.

I spent the best part of seven years being inactive. Work doesn’t help. We both work in the NHS, so for 40 hours a week I’m not doing an awful lot, it’s mostly sat on my backside kind of work, you know. It might pay the bills, but it doesn’t do our health any favours. If I’m not with a patient, I feel like I’ve got to sit at my desk and do the notes or do some research. We weren’t doing 150 minutes of exercise a week, put it that way.

Not for one second did I think I’d get prostate cancer, even though my family has been riddled with it. But I did get it, three and a half years ago, and it was quite advanced. I was off work for five and a half months, and I lost a lot of weight during that time, but as soon as I went back to work, my physical health got quite bad.

It’s great to be office-based and having people looking after me and all that, but I needed to be out and about doing something – I couldn’t just sit down all day. I really considered leaving my job, I wanted to improve my health. Anyway, I had a chat with my manager, and he told me about our cycling scheme – basically, you can get an electric bike through work, and I thought yeah, that sounds alright.

I don’t go anywhere now without that bike. I ride to work every day on it, something like nine miles all in, come rain or shine. Some people know me as the guy with the electric bike! I am lucky that I can build the cycle to work into my day – I know it’s not like that for everyone.

Nikki – For me, I’ve got to make my life as easy as possible, it’s one of the main ways that I can manage my bipolar. If there are too many time pressures, that’s a real trigger for me, so I drive the kids to childcare – we don’t have any family nearby – and then go straight to work.

I always plan to do something when I have a day off, but I’m knackered, constantly, and it doesn’t always happen. I miss it. I miss being as active as I used to be.

I’ve been trying at work to make sure that I get out at lunch time – even if it’s just for a walk round the block, to get away from my desk. We both know how beneficial physical activity is for us, finding the time to do it though is hard. The kids are a really good motivator for us, we want to be good role models, so we get out most evenings for a walk after tea.

The social aspects of it are also a huge motivator for us, Steve probably more so. I loved going to parkrun – before my knee injury – and seeing people that I recognised, there’s a real sense of community at things like that, you know. If I see a colleague at parkrun, it gives us something other than ‘work stuff’ to talk about in the kitchen.

Stephen – Yeah, Nikki’s right, I entered a few guys from work into a football league on a Wednesday evening. Just charging around with blokes half my age… it’s good for my wellbeing. I struggle most of the time to keep up with them, but I love it. Like Nikki said though, fitting it in is hard. Luckily football doesn’t start until 9.30pm, so we can make that work – it just means I don’t get to sleep until after midnight! It’s worth it though.

One thing I do have to say is that we don’t live like saints. We both try to be as active as possible, it’s something that’s important to both of us, although our diets haven’t really changed since trying to get healthier. We go to the pub, we eat takeaways still, we might eat out.

I’d probably say I do 150 minutes of activity each week – it’s just difficult to know what is and isn’t classified as ‘physical activity’. I don’t think of my cycling to work as ‘physical activity’. I guess if you compare me to my peers, I’m fairly active for a 49-year-old geezer.

This story is an extract from the NIHR Open Research paper How Do You Move? Everyday stories of physical activity.