Getting and Staying motivated about exercise
Getting and staying motivated about exercise is difficult for anyone. According to the Center of Disease Control, everyone needs at least 1 hour of exercise daily. Everyone should involve themselves in vigorous exercise like aerobics at least 3 times a week. If you struggle about getting motivated to exercise, here are some tips that may help you:
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- Establish goals - One of the simplest things you can do to motivate yourself to exercise is to create some goals. If you want to lose weight, set a date for when you want to lose all the weight. Pick some different exercises that you want to try. If you have never done rock climbing, use this as one of your exercises for the week. Rock climbing is a great strength-building activity and it will help tone up your body quickly. Maybe you enjoy hiking, create a goal to go at least 2 times a week. Having goals gives you something to look forward to and it gives you a little extra motivation to get started.
- Keep a Journal - Another way to motivate yourself to exercise is to keep track of how often you do it. If you only exercised 3 times last week, take a look at the other 4 days and your excuse for not exercising. Write down how long you exercised along with the different types of exercises you did. Walking for 20 minutes at lunch does count as part of your required 60 minutes of daily exercise so don't forget to look at all the little things you participate in daily. When you start exercising, keep track of your weight. As you start to see some progress with weight loss, it will motivate you to continue working harder to keep exercising so you can get rid of that excess weight.
- Use a Timer - Anyone that struggles with exercise may feel like 30 minutes on the treadmill will never end. To help yourself get over the frustration of watching the clock while you exercise, use a timer. This way you can't periodically check the clock to see how much longer until you are done. If you have a treadmill at home, watch television while you walk. This is a great way to keep your mind focused on other activities and it helps to boost your mood.
- Watch for burn-out - The reason why many people stop exercising is because they are simply burned out from exercise. If you find that exercising for 60 minutes is too much, break it up into smaller chunks. Try exercising for 20 minutes in the morning and then 20 minutes during lunch and the last 20 minutes you can finish up before dinner. You need to build yourself up to hardcore exercising so it is important to take it slow when you are just getting started. Many times we lose motivation because we set unrealistic expectations upon ourselves. It takes time for your body to build up the strength and stamina it needs to exercise regularly. Exercise and weight loss take a long time so you shouldn't be too hard on yourself when your goals are not met immediately.
- Stay Focused - If you had planned to run outside and it started to rain, find another exercise to do. We commonly make excuses for ourselves of why we don't need to exercise and this will quickly put us in a rut. Even if you don't feel like exercising, do at least 20 minutes daily. This will help you stay on track and keep your momentum going when you wake up tomorrow refreshed and ready for a vigorous workout.
