Becoming active: more to exercise than weight loss for indigenous men

ABSTRACT

Objective: To understand what motivates sedentary indigenous and ethnic minority men to become more physically active.

Design: We use thematic analysis to present data from a qualitative study exploring 23 sedentary indigenous Māori (New Zealand) men's experiences of completing a 12-week exercise intervention to improve their metabolic health.

Results: Four themes emerged: The Bros – having fellowship and mutual motivation; Being better informed about exercise; Impacting overall wellbeing; and Disseminating the findings beyond the study Exercise interventions informed by indigenous Māori cultural values and knowledge increased its relevance to their daily lives. The motivation for these indigenous men was more culturally-based external factors than an inherent desire to lose weight.

Conclusion: Indigenous and minority men in many developed countries have high morbidity and premature mortality related to sedentary lifestyles. The low uptake of physical activities possibly relates to focusing more on outcomes such as weight loss which lacks cultural relevance. When offering health promotion interventions for marginalized populations these findings highlight the importance of culturally tailoring interventions to the unique sources of motivation for each group to increase activity to improve their efficacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Well-being
• exercise
• physical activity
• Māori
• men's health
• outcome measures
• indigenous men
• minority men

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Health Research Council of New Zealand: [Grant Number HRC 12/829].