How to Start the Exercise Habit

The exercise habit is not the easiest habit for most people, and most people’s experiences consist of starting and stopping and starting again. Which is fine — don’t beat yourself up about it. The important thing is starting again. Here are some ideas on getting into your own regular exercise routine.

Steps

• Too difficult. People set out with a lot of ambition and enthusiasm, and start out with a big goal. “I’m going to go to the gym for an hour a day!” or “I’m going to run 30 minutes every day!” The problem is that the goal is too difficult to sustain for very long. You can do it for a few days, but you soon run out of energy, and it becomes a drag to do it, so you let it drop all too soon.
• Too many goals. Often we set out to do too much. We want to run, and lift weights, and eat healthy, and quit sweets, and stop drinking soda. Well, those are multiple goals, and you cannot focus on the exercise habit if you’re trying to do all the others at the same time. Or we might start with one goal, but then get caught up in another goal (to stop procrastinating, for example), and lose our focus on the first one.
• Not enough motivation. It’s not a lack of discipline, it’s a lack of motivation. The most powerful motivators are logging your habit and public pressure. There are many others that help as well.

• Take a look at the main reasons that creating a regular exercise habit is so difficult:
  

• Keep it simple. Here are the four simple steps to start the exercise habit (and keep it going).
  1. Set one easy, specific, measurable goal. There are several keys to setting this crucial goal:
     • Written: Write this down. Post it up. If you don’t write it down, it’s not important.
     • Easy: Don’t — do not — set a difficult goal. Set one that is super, super easy. Five minutes of exercise a day. You can do that. Work your way to 10 minutes after a month. Then go to 15 after 2 months. Make it easy to start with, so you can build your habit, then gradually increase.
     • Specific: By specific, this means asking yourself what activity are you going to do, at what time of day, and where? Don’t just say “exercise” or “I’m going to walk”. You have to set a time and place. Make it an appointment you can’t miss.
• Trigger: Have a “trigger” right before you do your habit. For example, you might always brush your teeth right after you shower. The shower is the trigger for brushing your teeth, and because of that, you never forget to brush your teeth. Well, what will you do right before you exercise? Is it right after you wake up? Right after your coffee? Right when you get home? As soon as you take off for lunch? A trigger that you do every single day is important.
• Measurable: You should be able to say, definitely, whether you hit or miss your goal today. Examples: run for 10 minutes. Walk 1/2 a mile. Do 3 sets of 5 push-ups. Each of those has a number that you can shoot for.
• One goal: Stick to this one goal for at least a month. Two months if you can bear it. Don’t start up a second goal during that 30-day period. If you do, you are scrapping this goal.
• Log it daily. This is the key habit. If you can log your workout, you will start to see your progress, and it will motivate you to keep going. And you have to make it a habit to log it right away. Don’t put it off, and say you’ll do it before you go to bed. As soon as you’re done working out, log it. No exceptions. And don’t make the log complicated — that will only make you resist doing the log. Just the date, time, and what you did.
• Report to others. This is key. You can do it on your blog, on an online forum, with your spouse, or friends or family, or a workout partner, or a coach, or a group, or a class. However you set it up, make it part of the process that you have to report your daily workout to other people. It could be using an online log, or on a forum, or through email, or the phone, or just by telling your co-workers what you did this morning. But be sure that they know your goal, and that you are going to report to them, and be sure that they are expecting it every day.
• Add motivation as needed. The first three steps might be enough for you to get the habit going. But if not, don’t just give up. If you miss two consecutive workouts, you need to look at why, and add a new motivation. Rewards, more public pressure, inspiration, whatever it takes. You can add one additional motivator, and then see if it works. If you miss two more consecutive workouts at any time, add another motivator. And so on, until the exercise habit sticks.

Tips

• Note that the four simple steps can be applied to starting any new habit that you wish to establish – better eating, more focused studying etc.

How to Perform an Invisible Fitness Move

For the deskbound, it is time to stop slouching and start stretching. This little office exercise won’t tax your brain or your body but it will help you to uncurl and it will definitely strengthen your posture. Being an office worker is no excuse for being hunched over!

Steps

• Sit at the edge of your chair. If it has wheels, make sure they are stable and not liable to run off with you.
• Place your hands in your lap.
• Lean back. It is very important to keep your back (spine) straight. Continue to lean until your shoulders touch the back of the chair.
• Keep the position for a couple of seconds.
• Return to the seated position. Do this using only your abdominal muscles. At no time should your shoulders lead you! Think tummy strength and use the abdominals to pull you back up.
• Repeat. This exercise should be performed 10 times in a row. Naturally, you can give yourself a few days to build up to 10 in a row. Do this exercise twice a day – mid-morning and mid-afternoon. You should notice the difference in increasing strength within 2 weeks.

Tips

• At all times focus on keeping tension out of your neck muscles. Relax them!

Thanks Wiki

How to Begin a Walking/ Weight Loss Program for the Very Unfit Person

This is a very hard task. You have to have a goal you very much want to meet for this to work for you. You have to go for it.

Steps

• Make goals for yourself that you can meet and make sure they matter to you.
• Your long-term goal may be to do 20 push-ups or to run a mile in less than 10 minutes. Or it may be to give your child a piggyback ride. Make sure it’s something YOU want.
• Your short term goals will start off as daily goals, based on what you can do now. One example would be to walk 10 minutes a day. Another would be to bend forward at the waist to stretch your back – if you can touch your toes now, great, if not, that’s a longer-term goal.
• You can have multiple short term goals.
• If you are REALLY out of shape, don’t worry about the scale at first. You will be building muscle, which weighs more than fat, which also means you may put on weight. Focus on being stronger and able to move more first.
• Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. Probably a snack or two in there too.
• Drink lots of water. Most people are slightly dehydrated all the time. It’ll help you to exercise more and to feel better.
• Track your progress on meeting your daily goals. You may find the act of writing down (paper or on the web) that you’ve done it is reward enough. Or you can buy a box of gold stars and make a calendar. Each day you go for a walk and try to touch your toes, put a star on the calendar.
• The http://www.sparkpeople.com site is also good for tracking exercise and other fitness goals.
• Build up your exercise to 1/2 to 1 hour a day. Walk to the mailbox, around your house, mow your lawn, walk around a mall while window shopping. If you can take the bus instead of driving you’ll find you do a lot more walking to and from bus stops.
• Turn on your favorite music and dance (sing, if you want).
• Cleaning your house is great exercise. Picking up clutter is good stretching and lifting. Take out the garbage. Get out the mop and vacuum. As you get stronger, move the furniture and vacuum underneath.
• Strength training is important. If you haven’t been fit, you want to focus on building your “core” muscles to support yourself in other activities.
• Stomach crunches are good for this. Lie down and see how much of your body you can lift off the floor. Shoulders? Cool. Tomorrow do it again. Over time you will lift more of yourself off and you will be able to do more crunches.
• Also good are leg lifts. You lie on your back and lift up one leg 3 or 5 times, until your muscles are fatigued. Then do the other leg. Roll on your side and lift up, then on your front and lift the legs “back”. Finish on the other side.
• Can you walk up stairs? It’s great for building leg muscle. Walking down can also build muscle if you use your muscles to lower yourself to each step – don’t just drop from step to step. If your joints complain about going down, take the elevator down. Walk up.
• Your muscles may feel sore as you start to use them more. Treat them to warm baths and stretching to make them happy and keep yourself limber.
• Also think about your balance. Can you stand on one foot? For how long? This is another way to improve those core supportive muscles!
• The other part of improving fitness is to look at what you eat. Whether you are a skinny high school kid who wants to gain or a middle-aged person who wants to lose, A good short-term goal is to record what you eat each day. Realize that the act of writing it down will change how you eat at first, but over time the novelty will wear off and you’ll be eating whatever is normal for you. This can help you spot habits you didn’t know you had. You can also use websites to track your eating; http://www.sparkpeople.com is great for this.

Tips

• If you have children around you, play with them. Ride bikes, take them to the park, chase them. If you are having fun while you exercise, it won’t seem like exercise.
• Figure out a schedule for yourself to work out. Example: Strength training on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; walking and housework 6 days a week.
• Always eat breakfast. This will kickstart your metabolism so you’ll FEEL like moving.
• Remember you are doing this so YOU will feel better. Tailor your goals to yourself. There’s nothing wrong with “I want to be able to carry two loads of clothing upstairs” as a goal!
• If you find yourself out of breath after only exercising for a short time, ask your doctor to check your breathing. Exercise can trigger an asthma attack for some people, tiring your lungs out before the rest of your body has gotten started. If you have untreated asthma, you might have more stamina than you know! 

Warnings

• Listen to your body! If something hurts, rest and allow yourself to heal. Pushing yourself to the point of injury is useless.

Thanks Wiki