Exercise and Your Life
Tom RooneyIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
This past week I had a motivation problem with getting myself psyched up for exercise since I just seemed to be too busy to get on my treadmill. There was an issue at work that I needed to stay a little longer than I anticipated. Then the car had problems where I spent the entire day at the dealership (being promised that it would only take a few more minutes). My daughter needed to be shuttled to the collage campus as well as to the store to buy more stuff. I was trying to get the lawn mowed around the rain drops and my sister called to ask if I could come with her to a local town meeting. 
All of these things were just excuses I thought and I was going to beat myself up over them since I wasn’t getting in the half hour of rigorous exercise that I had originally scheduled. Then I started to rationalize that maybe I was getting in some exercise and I didn’t even pay any attention to it because it wasn’t done on a treadmill. Well I did cut the lawn on Thursday and it took over an hour of my time. On Wednesday, I walked around the dealership lot 3 times which used up a couple of hours and was about a mile and a half. Sunday was the college campus day and I must have walked at least three or four hours that day. I know since my legs started to tighten up.
The reason I mention all of these things is that some days or weeks don’t just workout (no pun intended) for you when it comes to structured exercise. Walking is a good way to get your blood moving and can be listed as exercise for the day. Having sweat pour off your face is not the only way to get your exercise fix. Don’t be so hard on your self as I’ll take the John Lennon quote “life is what happens while your busy making other plans”. Things just happen and for those that have exercise routines, you just need to go with the flow sometimes.
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or just fidget!
(did you see my post/video on nonexercise exercise? my readers came up with some hilarious ideas…)
and Im with you. LIFE is for LIVING.
i agree, i guess there are days that just won’t work, Better refresh our routine. God bless!
I totally relate to your post, I have just lost 7 lbs, weighing in at 198, I workout a lot but I had some health issues that caused the weight gain. I personally LOVE working out. I include two key elements to my program: MAKE IT FUN AND REWARDING! This keeps me moving depsite the fact that I am at my heaviest weight.
You are so right, you do have to be gentle with yourself, consider exercise a journey, a process, there may be bumps in the road, I know I have hit those points! But the great thing about being gentle in the process is that, you learn to listen to your body, your body tells you when too much is too much and that is time to be gentle, maybe try some light yoga that day or simple stretching. That’s what I do.
Part of it is that I want results right now!!!! But it isn’t like the weight came on overnight, it isn’t going to come off that quickly. I realize that now, I was burning myself out quickly by not being gentle and now viewing it as a process, I am more gentle to my body. It is the only one I have!
Some view it as a chore, with our busy lives and hectice schedules, adding exercise on your already mile long to-do list, just seems like yet one more thing to do. It does not have to be. Some people are reluctant to start or keep on working out, some do not know where to start, they lost motivation because they may be using the same routing and get bored. There are many reasons why people put off starting and continuing a work out program. It does not have to be that way if you make it fun, rewarding, and spice it up. There are many ways to exercise besides just walking, running, using cardio and workout machines at the gym or as you mentioned structure to the point where if you don’t get that half hour in, like I have had happen it feels like a failure, not so.
We know we have to do it, for our physical as well as our mental health. It reduces stress, it slows down the aging process, and releases those feel good natural body chemicals into our system.
One of my friends LOVES her Jazzercise class, because it is fun, she likes the instructor, and the instructor incorporates different types of exercise to make it fun, like yoga, strength training. My friend looks 20+ years younger as well. SIGN ME UP, right lol!
Well, these are 5 ideas I use to keep exercise fun and rewarding so that I CONTINUE TO WORKOUT, even though I am at 198, I make it fun and reward myself for even the smallest accomplishments. I have found that by incorporating just these 2 elements that it increases the likelihood of success with any program/exercise/activity I try and keeps me moving. In this post below, there are fun activities that I have tried that keeps me exercising.
For me, no two workouts are the same, I spice it up everyday! This keeps me from becoming bored!
http://buzz.prevention.com/community/sofiah/exercise-a-chore-no-more
I do recommend that before starting working out or trying a new exercise program, make a quick stop to you doctor’s office first, especially if you have any health issues. Get that stamp of approval from the doc because you do not want to try something that may aggravate the existing health issue or do something that may injure yourself and stop you from working out. With this quick tip you can bring your fun list mentioned in the article to your doc and devise a plan together to get you started SAFELY!
I would love to get any feedback about how others start and continue to workout so I can add to my list and share with my friends.
Go with the flow, love your body, it has gotten you this far:)
Take good care and thank you for your blog! I really enjoyed reading through it this morning.
Wow, Thanks for the great comments. I really agree with you Sofia that you need to love you body. Kind of like that old asying “look after you body or no one else will”. Do the right thing for yourself and be careful as well.