For two oncologists, workout accountability partnership becomes lifelong friendship
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Over 3 years ago, Suzanne Cole, MD, and Aparna Parikh, MD, joined an online 30-day workout challenge with fitness goals in mind. But they each ended up walking away with much more.
The challenge — initiated by a fitness-focused spinoff of the Physician Moms Group on Facebook — involved finding an accountability partner in the group and tagging that person in posts or selfies after completing a workout.
Cole, medical oncologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center and medical director of the University Hospital Simmons Cancer Clinic at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Richardson/Plano, said she knew of Parikh only from seeing her posts on Facebook on the Hematology & Oncology Women Physicians Group. But they decided to become each other’s accountability partner for the challenge and, eventually, to take it even further. Their goal became to work out for at least 20 minutes a day for a year.
“Being in medicine and being a woman with kids means there are so many responsibilities that are on top of you,” Cole told Healio. “We wanted to try to get in shape, lose weight and reclaim our own fitness.”
Parikh, medical director of the Center for Young Adult Colorectal Cancer and director of the Global Cancer Care Program at Mass General Cancer Center, said the challenge came at a time when she had just finished nursing and pumping for her second baby, and she wanted to commit to working out again.
“Work and home were totally all-consuming, and I felt that I needed to create some intentional space and time for myself, some semblance of personal time to make me feel better mentally and physically,” she told Healio.
‘A beautiful friendship’
Tagging each other in their workout posts became an inspiration for both Cole and Parikh to make sure they completed their daily activity.
“Aparna is always ahead of me because she's on East Coast time, so I always feel this huge motivation to work out because I see she did it and it makes me stay accountable,” Cole said. “There have been brief periods when she's very busy — maybe she has a grant due or she’s on service and working crazy hours — and so sometimes I’ll work out first, and I’ll be like, ‘Ah, yes!’ We've been doing this for so long that she's a daily part of my life now.”
Eventually the year passed — with Parikh working out every day even if it meant doing speed-walking laps in the airport amid a 32-hour journey to India — but they both decided to keep it going for another year.
“At the end of the year I realized there's no way I would have done that without Suzanne,” Parikh said. “Once it was over, we both felt sad. We wondered if it was weird to keep it up and do it again, but we did, with the goal of doing 5 days a week the next year.”
By then the daily workout check-ins had blended in with other aspects of their lives.
“Our professional lives will sometimes overlap; we check in if we know the other is doing a presentation at a meeting. We’ve gotten to know about each other’s kids,” Cole said. “We know the minutia of each other’s lives and work details.”
Although they had a public-facing partnership on Facebook focused on their workout check-ins, in the background, a friendship was evolving organically, Parikh said.
“We talked about decisions regarding our kids, recruitment opportunities, professional development and challenges, which happened entirely independently,” she said. “A beautiful friendship started to evolve parallel to the workout partnership, something really meaningful to both of us. She is someone who I have a very strong connection with; we can just pick up the phone and call each other, and we’ve seen each other through a lot of life things like pregnancy and when I got COVID early in the pandemic.
“There are a lot of things that happen in life and a lot that is still a work in progress, both professionally and personally, but what has remained constant has been this thing that we created together,” Parikh added.
An outlet for stress
For both Cole and Parikh, making physical activity a priority has helped them to manage the stresses of being an oncologist.
“It's very easy for physicians in particular to neglect our health because we’re such doers and caretakers of others,” Cole said. “That's also true of women who are mothers, because we have that additional layer of responsibility on top of the very important work we do. It’s really hard to protect time to do something for yourself.”
Cole described the time she dedicates to working out each morning as “mental therapy.”
“That type of self-care is really the only time of my day that I’m ever alone, because once I go into that 7 a.m. tumor board meeting or start my clinic, it’s nonstop until I am sleeping, with people all around me pulling on my attention and time,” she said. “Making that ritual a habit has been really important for my own emotional wellness.”
Working out also can provide time to be truly “unplugged” in an effort to stay off burnout, Parikh said.
“There are many factors out of our control that lead to burnout, or what is increasingly being described as a sort of ‘moral injury’ in which you feel like the system is not necessarily supporting you to be able to provide your best care,” she said. “There are few things that are in our control, and for me that is intentionally created time with my kids and family and intentionally leading an active lifestyle. It’s not just the physical activity but also the forced time to unplug and disconnect from work to provide some distance and mental clarity.”
Physical activity also can offer a counterbalance and stress relief for the emotional toll of oncology work, Parikh said.
“Oncology can be in and of itself emotionally draining and taxing, especially when you feel like you are constantly facing death and dying with people,” she said. “We take on a lot of the emotional burdens of our patients and colleagues, and it can be mentally exhausting. It’s really important to have these moments when you’re not thinking about work or the millions of things on your to-do list.”
Having such an outlet and friendship has been especially helpful during the pandemic, Cole said.
“Our friendship and workout accountability partnership was going on well before the pandemic, and having it continue became one normal thing that had not changed, whereas COVID had made everything else feel like some surreal alternate universe,” she said.
Where to begin
When it comes to beginning and maintaining a fitness regimen amid a busy physician life,
Cole recommended choosing an activity you enjoy.
“Everyone is into Peloton, but that’s not for me,” she said. “I enjoy running more, and it’s easier for me to keep that up.”
Parikh referred to three tips that have been helpful for her.
“It doesn’t have to be all or nothing,” she said. “My first suggestion would be to start small — maybe 10 minutes a day of exercise, or a mindfulness practice a couple times a week. If you are too ambitious with your goals, you’ll set yourself up for disappointment.”
Secondly, Parikh suggested scheduling fitness into your calendar.
“A lot of physicians and women already are multitasking and making to-do lists. Just make wellness a part of your to-do list and build it into your day or your week as you do every other thing,” she said.
Lastly, find some form of accountability.
“Accountability helped me tremendously,” she said. “Neither Suzanne nor I would have been able to keep up what we have done without each other.
“Being oncologists, I think we’re both a little compulsive, a little ‘type A,’” she added. “So, committing to a goal with a like-minded person with whom I have camaraderie and who is traversing very similar challenges has provided motivation.”
Cole agreed.
“Whatever it is you enjoy doing, do that,” she said. “And if you have somebody who can walk alongside you, it can be so enriching to experience it together with somebody else.”
For more information:
Suzanne Cole, MD, can be reached at suzanne.cole@utsouthwestern.edu.
Aparna Parikh, MD, can be reached at aparna.parikh@mgh.harvard.edu.
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