How to Get into an Exercise Habit

So you've done all the research, read all the websites, and you know how much you need to exercise and the types of exercises you need to do. But 3 weeks later, it seems like a burden and a chore, and you don't want to stick with it. Instead, follow these directions to slowly incorporate exercise into your life, so that it becomes a habit easily!

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• creativity
• patience

1. First of all, calculate how much money you earn for a half hour of work. Yes, it seems irrelevant right now, but this number will be important later. If you are a stay at home spouse, take your working spouse's hourly wage rate and divide by 4. This is going to be used for what I call the Half Hour Test.

2. Make a list of some things you could do that would be more exercise than what you are doing now. Be sure to include things that are ridiculously easy. For example: doing a single push-up, 10 jumping jacks, reaching towards your toes for 10 seconds. Try to include exercises to help with cardio fitness, strength training, and flexibility.

3. For each exercise, do the Half Hour Test. Ask yourself, "Would I do this if I got paid half an hour's wages each time I did this, if I had to do this every day for a year?" Imagine that you would get paid daily, the instant you finished the exercise, but if you missed a day, you could never get paid again and all the money you'd earned would be taken away. The idea is to pick 1-3 exercises that are so easy, that your gut reaction is, "That's easy!" Err on the side of picking something too easy!

4. Once you have your exercises picked, "test" them to see if you can make them a bit tougher. Let's say 1 push-up passed the Half Hour Test. What about 2 push-ups? 3? 4? If at any time you feel any hesitation ("well, maybe I would do 4 push-ups a day every day"), stop. Do not pick a level that causes any hesitation. If 3 push-ups is the most you can do and still eagerly say, "Yes, I'd do that!" then stop there.

5. Take your exercise and do it every day for a month. If you picked more than 1 exercise, plan to rotate the exercises. Do only 1 exercise a day!

6. After a month, doing the easy exercise(s) should be a habit. Now you can bump up the level that you are doing. Repeat steps 2 through 4. Again, stop at whatever level of exercise still has you easily answering "yes" to the Half Hour Test. If you want, you can combine exercises (e.g., do 1 push-up and 10 jumping jacks) but do the Half Hour Test for the combination, not each individual exercise. As before, do these exercises every day for a month before trying to make them tougher.

7. Little by little, increase the amount you are doing until you are doing the amount of exercise you want, e.g., 30 minutes of cardio 4X a week, 30 minutes of strength training 2X a week, etc.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't worry that the exercises you start off doing are not going to be that helpful for your fitness. This process is not about doing exercises now that will make you fit; it is about getting into a habit so that once you reach the level of good fitness exercises, you'll be doing them for the rest of your life instead of quitting after a couple of weeks.
• Do what feels right for YOU. 30 minutes of dancing isn't too much if you adore dancing, but even 2 minutes of dancing could be too much if you despise it. Don't worry about keeping up with the exercise routines that your friends have. Personalize everything to your own likes and needs.
• Do NOT rush this process! Pushing yourself to do something that causes you to hesitate even a little will undermine the process of getting your body used to an exercise habit. You want to feel that this is so easy to do, you'd be foolish not to give up such a small amount of time and effort. Once you're in the habit of giving up a little time and effort, you can give a little more the next month, and even more the next, etc.

Resources

• How to Lose Weight with the Food Pyramid
• How to Troubleshoot Weight Loss Problems

[TeryLynne]

on 7/15/2008 Great article! 5*****

[asksummer]

on 7/12/2008 Good article.