I would say most of us know that exercising is among the essential habits for good health. It’s right up there with eating healthy, sleeping, and taking care of your mental health. But how do you make it a habit? Here’s the 3 tricks that worked for me.
1. Start Small
Maybe you already workout every once in a while, or maybe you’re starting from scratch. If you are either of these, keep reading, this is definitely for you. Growing up I was an athlete and always active, so finding the motivation to do a workout was easy for me. But throughout most of my time in college, other things became priorities and exercise took the back burner.
If you have read The Compound Effect, you understand how “Big Mo” (short for momentum) can work for you. I’ll explain it a little bit with an example, but if you haven’t read it, I still highly recommend you put it on your reading list.
In my life, I had experienced “Big Mo” working for me in the past when I was an athlete. I was already in shape and exercising, so exercising more didn’t require a lot of motivation or discipline. In a sense, I was already primed to work out. On the other hand, throughout most of college, working out was not a habit, so “Big Mo” wasn’t working for me. When I wanted to work out I had to drum up a lot of motivation and self-discipline because it wasn’t normal for me anymore.
Think of brushing your teeth. For most of us, this is a habit we’ve already established for when we wake up and before we go to bed. Most of the time we don’t need to summon all kinds of self-discipline to brush our teeth. It’s the same with working out. Whatever is a habit will continue to get easier and easier, and whatever isn’t a habit will require some discipline to get started.
All of this to say, you can feel good about starting small. Often when we set goals or resolutions, we go big. And it’s good to have a big goal to work toward in the long-term. But when you’re trying to make something a habit, if you go too big, you may get discouraged or overwhelmed when you don’t accomplish it.
Can you relate to this: “January 1st I’m going to work out 6 times a week for an hour. I know I can do it!”? Then the second or third week of January rolls around and you are so far from you goal, you give it up altogether. What worked way better for me starting out was exercising 3 times a week for 10, 15, or 20 minutes, even though my long-term goal was to do longer and more frequent workouts. A little bit is better than nothing. This also helps if you feel overwhelmed or like you don’t have the time to work out. You can fit it into your schedule in between tasks for a quick break, or even while you boil water for pasta! (I’ve done this so many times.)
When you complete an attainable goal like this you will 1) feel accomplished and 2) start trusting that you can keep the promises you make to yourself. In turn, this will 3) give you the confidence to attain even more.
It’s totally okay if you need to start out with some easier workouts, or even just stretching/yoga. What you’re doing right now is building the habit of doing some kind of physical activity. Once I got that part down, I increased the number of times a week I exercise. And lastly, I increased the amount of time I spend on each workout.
Now I don’t even need that much motivation to exercise, because I’ve tapped into “Big Mo.” Even on a lazy day, I can still manage to roll off the couch and do a quick workout. It’s just a part of my day, like brushing my teeth or washing my face.
2. Make Monday Your Favorite
A lot of us have a favorite day of the week, and for most of us that day is not Monday. If you work a typical Monday-Friday, 9 to 5 type of job, Monday is the end of a much-needed and relished weekend. It’s back to the grind and maybe you feel extra tired after work from staying up too late on Sunday night (any other night owls out there?). You didn’t work out all weekend because you were out running errands, catching up on things around the house, or you had too many activities planned. You come home and you just want to relax, so you plop down on the couch and before you know it you’ve binge-watched an entire series! You tell yourself it’s only this one day, but the next day, the same thing happens!
Have you ever heard the saying, “Always workout on Monday”? The reason is that if you start the week off on the right foot, you are more likely to compound that choice in a positive direction for the rest of the week. This is why I made my Monday workouts essential, while also sweetening the deal with a little incentive. There’s a few different ways you can incentivize it:
- Work out your favorite body part: abs, glutes, shoulders, arms, back, etc.
- Do your favorite type of work out: cardio, weights, conditioning, dancing, swimming, etc.
- Work out the body part you are most determined to tone, strengthen, lose fat on, etc.
- Do the easiest workout for the week
I love doing abs, and it’s also the body part that I’m extra determined to tone, so I always do abs on Monday. If you don’t start your workweek on Monday, feel free to choose whichever day you start your workweek, or whichever is the most difficult for you to work out.
Conversely, I often make my hardest workouts on some of my favorite days: Fridays and Saturdays. I’m already in a great mood because I’m off work for the weekend, and I can spend more time at the gym, or wherever I’m working out, because I don’t have to go to bed early. (Side note: You don’t need to start out going to the gym, or ever even go to the gym at all if you find great ways to exercise elsewhere.)
I now look forward to my Monday workout because it’s my favorite, and I look forward to the challenge of my most difficult workout on my favorite days because I have that extra boost in my mood and time.
3. Dig Deep
You’re slowly making exercise a part of your lifestyle, and then boom, you have a day where you fall off the wagon. It’s okay, it’s not the end of the world, and it happens to all of us. The best thing you can do is get back into it as soon as possible because you don’t want to lose that Big Mo that you’ve built.
First of all, dig deep and ask yourself: Why did I want to make working out a habit in the first place? We all know that we should exercise, but if you don’t have a powerful and specific reason for why you personally want exercise to be a part of your life, it will be difficult to push past times when you see no results, or don’t feel like doing it. Remember, we are compounding a little at a time in a positive direction, so you won’t always see major results right away.
You will have to remember why you started! Did you want to be healthy enough to hike up to Machu Picchu on your vacation? Did you want to look exactly how you envisioned yourself in your wedding dress? Did you want to be able to keep up with your friends on your groups’ weekend hikes? Did you want to feel healthy and prevent health problems as you get older? Make sure it’s personal to you.
Trust the process and that you are getting healthier every day. Right now you’re teaching your body that it feels good to take care of yourself, even if you aren’t yet seeing your ultimate result. An additional benefit is that when you take the step of working out, you start to think about your health more and make healthy choices in other areas, like eating healthy or watching less TV. You begin to crave what is good for you. Pretty soon you will notice that not only are you able to initiate a workout with little motivation, but you are moving closer and closer to your health goals overall.
My 2 favorite YouTube channels for free yoga, stretching, and workouts are Sarah Beth Yoga, and Blogilates by Cassey Ho. Both have lots of short videos that you can do by themselves, or as you build up to longer workouts, you can do a few in a row. Check out my Workout Playlists page to get some inspiration.
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