One of the most difficult things to overcome to reach your fitness goals is a lack of motivation. I enjoy exercise for the sake of being active, so usually I'm itching to get going rather than starving for desire. But everyone has days when they "just don't feel like it," whether they thrive on exercise or have to force themselves to get up and move.
There's no way around the fact working out takes time. But if you're staying fit to maintain a healthy lifestyle, fitness only should take a fraction of your day. If you manage your routine correctly, you're only focusing on moving for 20 to 60 minutes daily. Compared with the 23 hours you're not exercising, this is a small fraction of your time. If you're exercising more than this, it's either your job to work out, you're training for something, or you're overdoing it.
But before you can accomplish the goal of thinking about how little time exercise takes out of your day, make sure it really is not taking too much time. If you want to be able to keep moving, you have to sit still enough. But going too hard or for too long yields more than just physical injury; you're setting yourself up for mental burnout if you exercise too strenuously, too frequently, or both.
If you pressure yourself to exercise for 40 minutes or more every day, it's probably going to weigh on you until you get it out of the way. Likewise, you'll probably be miserable the whole time you're in motion because you've put so much energy into loathing the thought of it that you literally lose momentum. Setting more realistic goals to which you know you can stick on a regular basis will allow you to be in better shape overall because you're not taking time off for injury or because you're sick of it.
For example, complete a 20-30 minute lifting routine along with 20 minutes of cardiovascular exercise three days a week. Then, do 20-40 minutes of cardiovascular exercise on two to three of the days you don't lift. This gives your body at least one day of rest, and you will still have to challenge yourself to keep up with the routine. Take things one day at a time and remind yourself that exercise is occupying a small part of your day.
Then comes both the most difficult and beneficial part: Don't let yourself dwell on exercise when you're not in the middle of it. This way you won't build it up in your head into a dreaded event in the absence of which you rejoice. You may eventually feel silently exultant for the moment you get a chance to take a break from work, lace up the shoes, and hop on an exercise bike to clear your head. You might even be able to push yourself harder, or perform better without thinking about it.
Changing the way you think about exercise also can immensely improve your consistency. It allows you to harness fitness to enhance your lifestyle, not govern it. However, changing the way you think about something is arguably the hardest thing to do since all the things you decide to do start with thought, and getting to the basics of anything takes practice. But if you really stick with a new perspective and get through the initial days when it's still a pain, you can save yourself from the mental torture of feeling like you're forcing yourself to get moving every time you exercise. So make a few simple changes in your attitude and schedule, and you'll be able to Rize up, get fit, and maybe look forward to it for a change.
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