Find Your Motivation to Move

When all you feel like doing is channel surfing, try these tricks to perk up your enthusiasm to exercise.   They are sure to get you off the couch!

Ditch the All or Nothing Mindset

Does this scenario sound familiar:  You set the goal to exercise three days per week. You do great for two weeks—never missing a session, then by week three “life gets in the way,” and you have to miss your first session.  By your next session, you’ve already started to lose some momentum, so you skip yet another session.  By your third session you say to yourself, well, I’ve already missed two sessions, so why not just take the week off.  And before you know it, one missed session turns into three missed sessions, and finally you tell yourself we'll, I’ve already blown it so why keep going?!  This is where you make a BIG mistake! 

Once you’ve gotten into a routine, missing an exercise session can feel like a major setback, which can only make it harder to get back on track.  But this all or nothing thinking about exercise makes it impossible to make exercise truly part of your lifestyle.  In an ideal world, we would all have everything in our lives perfectly scheduled with no interruptions, but this is NOT reality.  The fact is, there are going to be days when getting your planned exercise session in is not doable and trying to fit it in your schedule is only an added stress.

The only way to make exercise part of your lifestyle is to learn to be flexible with your exercise plan.  For example, if you don't have the time one day to do your usual exercises at the gym, do a shorter, less intense session at home or wherever you have the space.  I do this all the time.  Every week I set a plan to follow specific strength training routines at the gym on specific days, but sometimes I’m not able to follow my plan because work priorities take over; I may have a client to meet or a presentation to give.  In those instances, I either do some modified exercises at home in 10-15 minutes or I do something light like stretch or do energizing exercises instead (Click here to watch my video “Top 5 Energy-Boosting Exercises” for some energizing exercise ideas.) If you’re too busy for even a quick exercise routine, don’t worry about it!  Just plan to get back on track the next day or the following day. 

Remember the 80/20 Rule: It’s not so important that you exercise 100% of the time—what's important is that you make exercise a part of your routine 80% of the time.  With this realistic mindset about exercise you are sure to be more consistent about it!  

Ease into Exercise

When you’re eager to start your new exercise routine, it’s easy to jump into it going full throttle, but this balls to the wall mind-set will likely lead to set back; in my experience, I find that women either get hurt or quickly lose steam or both. 

Despite what you see on the The Biggest Loser, pushing yourself to the point of nearly passing out is not only ineffective in the long run, but it's dangerous.  When I worked as a personal trainer at a gym, I couldn’t tell you how many times I saw people with this hardcore thinking about exercise set themselves up to fail because they often saw little to no results, and more often than not, they got injured.  And what happens when you don’t see results or you get injured exercising?  You stop!  Am I right?

You must remember that exercise is a stress to your body and depending on how much stress your body is already under, engaging in a rigorous exercise program may actually do more harm than good because you’re adding to your existing stress load.  You are better off starting slow, keeping your exercises simple, and gradually increasing your training volume, intensity and frequency over time.  For example, if you have a fair amount of stress in your life, you might start with light exercises like walking, stretching and doing energizing exercises or light yoga two to three days per week. After a period of four to six weeks you could gradually increase the amount and intensity of your exercises and possibly add another training day.

Whenever you’re following an exercise program, you want to make sure that you give your body a chance to recover.  Taking a day or two “off” each week and alternating intense periods of exercise with light periods of exercise is absolutely necessary for growth and repair.  When you take a day “off” that doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t exercise at all—it could simply mean that you take some time to stretch or perform energizing exercises, which actually create energy as opposed to expend it.   Your body uses resting periods to rebuild itself, regain strength and restore energy both physically and mentally; periods of rest are important to prevent injury and burnout, and to ensure that you get the results you want.  So, to make the most of your exercise routine, you must make time to rest!

Revamp Your Goals

Setting goals is very important when you embark on a journey to improve your health and fitness, but setting goals that are only result-focused will inevitably lead to a pattern on again off again exercise habits.  For example, just saying, “I want to lose 10 pounds” is a “result goal,” and by itself, leads to frustration and failure because it fails to account for the behaviors that are required to help you reach that goal. 

Instead of obsessing about the scale and your weight (the result), shift your focus to the benefits of exercise and set very simple and specific “action steps” (the behaviors) that you need to take in order to achieve your result.  This approach to goal setting not only makes your goals more clear and concrete, but it also helps to make exercise part of your lifestyle as opposed to a temporary means to an end.  For example, you could set the goal to walk for 20 minutes three days per week and/or do some resistance training for 30 minutes two to three days per week.  You could take it a step further and even schedule your exercises on specific days—as I mentioned above, this is what I do with my exercise routine.  I find that when I pencil my exercises into my schedule I’m more apt to stick with them (just remember to be flexible with your exercise schedule!)

Keep in mind that using the scale to measure physical progress following a resistance-training program can be very deceptive and demotivating.  Here’s why: As you build some lean muscle and increase your strength, your scale weight may actually go up.  I’ve had a number of clients get upset when they weigh themselves after following a strength-training program because their scale weight increases and they think they’re getting fatter!  But the reality is, when you build lean muscle your body fat goes down and so does the size of your pants.  So, instead of focusing all of your attention on your ideal weight focus on the action steps or behaviors that are going to help you get there.

Change Gears

There’s a great saying that goes change nothing and nothing changes!  Well, this is true with exercise.  If you expect to see changes in your body, then your body needs to see changes in your exercises!

Women tend to go on exercise kicks where they do the same form of exercise over and over until they get board—both mentally and physically—and eventually they just stop exercising all together!  That is until the latest exercise trend grabs their interest and inspires them to get moving again.  Can you relate?

Instead of doing just one kind of exercise, spice up your routine with a variety of different ways to move your body and use your muscles.  You must rotate your exercises so that your body doesn’t get bored and hit a plateau.  Here’s what I do to keep my body guessing:  I strength train at the gym three days per week; I do yoga two to three days per week at home; and I do interval training one to two days per week.  I change up my exercise routines every four weeks to keep both my mind and my body stimulated, so I never get bored with exercise!     

Burn Cals with Pals

If you’re not motivated to exercise on your own, find a workout buddy or small group of friends to train with each week.  Having the accountability of meeting with someone else to exercise can be a great way to stick with your plan.  But before you assemble your workout team, keep these two things in mind:

1. Make sure you select workout buddies that are reliable, positive and motivated.  Support is the number one success factor for women embarking on a new health program and if your exercise partners bail on your most of the time then you're defeating your purpose of setting up a no-fail plan.  And being around people who bring negativity to your group will only bring you down, which makes it really hard to stay motivated.

2. Make sure you choose partners with similar goals and fitness abilities.  While it can be beneficial to exercise with someone who is more “fit” than you, if your partner has the goal to run a 5K and you just want to not feel winded walking to your car and/or up and the down stairs, then that’s probably not a good match.  It’s best to have a certified fitness professional assess you before you engage in an exercise program to determine which exercises are best suited for you.

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Tell me about what motivates you to stick with your exercise plan in a comment below.

To finding your motivation to move,

Melissa  Koerner