How to make regular exercise a habit....

Today's post: Tuesday, 6-24-2008

Regular exercise that you keep doing has a huge & almost unbelievable set of benefits.

Here are a few highlights.

If you do it, you’ll be less fat. You’ll be a lot healthier & much more likely to stay healthy. And, we now know you’ll grow new brain cells and think & remember better. Your sex life will tend to be good & stay good. And, you’ll be more resilient in the face of stress.

But if you haven’t been exercising regularly, you might find it hard to get into & keep doing.

Here are some ideas that have worked well for me & other people.

Use the ones that sound like a fit for you & consider trying some of the rest.

1. Do all or part of your exercise in the first part of the morning. And, doing that exercise or that part of your exercise at home also helps.

That’s one of the most important strategies. With very rare exceptions the unexpected demands of your day tend to happen later in the day. And, when they do, instead of derailing your exercise that day, you’ve already done some exercise that day.

In fact, one study I read about found that about 70 % of people who exercised first thing in the morning stuck with it while only 35% of the people who exercised later in the day kept exercising.

In my case, I schedule a 15 minute strength training session at home in the early morning. Saturday, Monday, & Weds I do an upper body set; Sunday, Tuesday, & Thursday I do leg exercises; & on Friday I do a 5 minute abdominal routine. Using only a relatively light dumbbells for upper body exercises & my bodyweight for leg exercises & push ups, this is not enough to build my strength a lot. But I hardly ever miss doing any of these sessions.

In contrast to that, though I schedule to go the gym to do heavier upper body exercises Monday & Weds evenings, I tend to only make about half of the Mondays as I get home late Mondays & about 80 % of the Weds evenings. The list of things that prevents me from going 100 % of the time is long.

Since I do my at home exercises & do make a special effort to go when I can, I don’t lose ground very much when I miss my evenings at the Gym. I would if I didn’t exercise at home in the early mornings also.

3. It’s great if you can do more; but it’s not necessary to be super strict with yourself about exercising a lot every week. However, even 500 calories a week gives you 40% of the health benefits of exercising an hour a day seven days a week.

Since walking or running a mile or 15 minutes of strength training with no long waits between sets tends to burn 100 calories, 500 calories a week is quite doable. (My early morning strength training at home works out to about 700 calories a week. And I make the gym often enough to average another 400 calories or so a week.)

And, since the health consequences of not doing at least that much are so bad, I suggest you be very strict with yourself about always doing 500 calories a week or more every week.

Similarly, be flexible about your exercise routine if events force you to be any given day. But be very strict with yourself about hitting this minimum each week.

4. As long as you do at least two or three days of exercise during the week, you may be able to do a good bit of your weekly exercise on weekends if you have more time then. Weekends only is not enough but exercise on Saturday, Sunday, & any two other days can be.

5. Keeping a log book also helps you to stay on track. Not everyone will be willing to do a log book that they write a brief note of the date & that day’s exercise in.

But almost everyone who knows what exercise does FOR you & not exercising does TO you & who keeps a log book will keep exercising. If you are willing to use a log book at all, I recommend it very highly.

6. If you are at all social or if you want to have heavy enough weights to do strength training well or need access to cardio equipment for interval cardio, give serious consideration to joining a gym & going as regularly as you can.

It’s nice to see the other regulars each time. And that helps me to go as often as I can. We are good examples for each other & it’s nice to see other people I know are getting health benefits.

And, I like the extra strength & muscle I have because I work out there.

In addition, if you are new to strength training, many gyms will help you learn and set up a workout plan. Plus, in many exercises, the machines are safer to use, particularly for people new to strength training, than the free weights.

7. Finally, remember these two points:

a) You may not be able to do all the exercise you’d like or do all the exercise you schedule every single day you schedule it, but almost everyone can do 500 calories a week or more.

&

b) If you do regular exercise every week, it does incredibly good things FOR you. And, if you don’t, it does all the reverse of those things TO you.