How to Get Motivated to Exercise

"I don't have enough time."

"I am too tired."

"I don't know how to eat healthy."

"I have to spend a fortune to eat healthy."

"I have no motivation to get started."

"Exercise is stupid, I can just take pills."

If you ever said anything above, you have probably thought that you will never get healthy. I am here to say you CAN get healthy. The mistake people make is they feel like they need motivation when, in fact, they only need to get started. The motivation follows action; when you see results. The best way to overcome most of the reasons not to exercise listed above is to have a plan in place.

The first thing to do is make actual time for exercise; schedule it into your day. If you do not exercise, do not plan on starting with 90 minutes of strength training and cardio.  Start with something realistic, like walking around the neighborhood for 10 minutes. Focus on one thing that is easy to achieve, and make that a habit.  You can always add on to your routine over time. You are almost always going to be too tired to get started, but having it scheduled on your calendar and doing something will help you get started.  After about 8 to 10 minutes, that tired feeling will go away as you warm up. One of the most amazing things about exercise is the immediate lift in energy and mood you get post exercise.

Exercise is only half of the battle with getting healthier.  The other half is eating healthier. Just like exercise, it comes down to having a good plan in place to avoid ordering out every night. One of the things I do is meal planning with my wife at the beginning of the week.  We have put together a few simple healthy, low salt recipes that we like to make. We go through all of the cabinets and fridge to make a list of all of the ingredients we need and go to the store on Saturday. On Sunday, we cook all day and get things ready for the week ahead.  We alternate days for lunch and dinner to add a little variety and add a cheat day on Friday. The cheat day is simply a simple day that we have something frozen.

I purposely do not use the word “diet” because it has a negative connotation.  Eating healthy should not be seen as giving things up. It is a reprioritization of when you eat certain things. Eating pizza and burgers everyday is not healthy either, but we justify it as something that makes us “live.” Soda, pizza, burgers, and other treats are just that, treats. Make food about getting better nutrition, and not missing out on treats.  You can still eat treats, but you just reduce the amount.  It is never okay to eat a pound of fries.

Finally, modern medical science is making it seem like exercise is unnecessary.  There are pills for blood pressure, tachycardia, arteriosclerosis (blood thinners), and there is even a pill in development to give you the benefits of exercise. So why exercise for health?  So far, every pill has a host of side effects that make it necessary to take more pills to deal with those side effects.  I personally would like to exercise for an hour a day and take a small amount of time out of my day to eat healthy rather than depend on medication to make me better.  Now, genetics are not always in our favor, so we sometimes need medicine, but control the controllables when you can. Just always follow a doctor’s advice about pills. I am not anti pill or some crazy anti-vaxxer, I just want to do whatever I can to live as clean as possible. There are also so many psychological (anti-depressive) benefits to exercise that you cannot get from pills.

If this all seems overwhelming, I have pre-made meal and exercise plans HERE to get you started. Having a plan has saved me so many times from just not working out.  Pretty much the only thing to stop me from exercising and meal-prepping is being sick. You can get there too. Just take small steps and make realistic goals.  The motivation to workout will follow. If you need a little more help, feel free to reach out to me.