How Can I Motivate Myself to Exercise?
Every time my boyfriend and I go visit his mother, I always take home some women’s magazines. She has about 6 subscriptions and always gives me her old issues. I admit to liking women’s magazines, but not enough to actually purchase them myself! They are a fun read and usually provide some material/ideas for me to write about. When I looked through an old issue of Shape, they had this “motivational” tip that they claimed was sure to work (I’m paraphrasing here):
“Instead of telling yourself you should exercise, tell yourself you want to exercise, and then you won’t view it as a chore”
Oh, Ok, great! So your advice is to lie to myself? That’s a healthy attitude. Advice like this bothers the crap out of me. Like I’m supposed to magically love exercise just by telling myself that I want to? I know there are some people out there who actually do like exercising, but I’m not one of them. I’m hoping to change my mind on that, but simply telling myself to do so won’t work.
Why do a lot of us need motivation to exercise? There’s a reason the diet industry currently makes about 55 billion a year- people, such as myself, are lazy. The majority of dieters would rather lose weight through changing what they eat or taking a pill rather than moving their butts. I can totally understand this- it’s much easier and far less time-consuming to change what you put in your mouth rather than spend 30 minutes to an hour doing some form of exercise. I also notice that every so often, an article claiming that you don’t need to exercise to lose weight will pop up in a women’s magazine. (Personally, I feel this is just an idea women’s magazines recycle in order to get “new” material and grab a potential reader’s attention, but that’s another post.)
So is exercise necessary for weight loss? Personally, I’m not a doctor or scientist so I couldn’t say for sure. I have seen in my own progress that I can still lose weight even if I don’t exercise (about 1-2 pounds a week). But I do know is that moving your body is part of achieving a healthy attitude and lifestyle. Exercising in any form helps strengthen our muscles, keeps us flexible, and gives us endorphins that reduce stress and make us happy. It helps keep our bodies working properly and builds up our immune system. Unfortunately, in the past I have been a “yo-yo exerciser”, where I’ll exercise for a couple months but then life gets in the way and I lose the habit. During those times when I was moving my body, I did feel lighter, had more energy, and felt better emotionally. My body felt Ok without exercise, but functioned a lot better when I did.
I think the biggest challenge today is that most of us view exercise mostly as a means to an end, the end being weight loss. Then it does feel like something we have to do, instead of something we want to do. Perhaps that’s what the quote in Shape was alluding to… if that was their intention then they did it poorly. My goal is to view exercising as a necessary part of feeling good in my own body. If you are looking for motivation to exercise, I encourage you do the same.
So what am I trying to do? I have a great DVD- Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred, which has 30 minute workouts that combine strength, cardio, and ab work. I’ve used it before with great results, and my goals is to do this DVD at home 3-4 times a week. I’m hoping this blog will help keep me focused on this goal, as a regular exercise routine is one big hurdle I have to jump. But I encourage all of you to find something that works for YOU, not what a magazine tells you. The most important thing is moving your body, and we all just have to find a way to do it!
