How many times have you started a ‘health kick’, with loads of motivation, only for life to get in the way and you fall back into your old routine? This could be exercising, eating healthier or drinking less etc. Also, it’s perfectly normal not to enjoy exercise! If you haven’t done any exercise in a while or you are overweight then it’s HARD. Getting started is tough.
What happens?
You start off great guns but then you have a poor nights sleep and so feel too tired to exercise one day. That one day very easily turns into 2 days or more and then the next workout feels REALLY hard! So motivation to exercise again is just associated with pain!
Or you may get bored with the gym (or exercise class) or running feels like a horrible slog because you ate poorly the day before. Or it just does! Exercise can be sneaky like that, sometimes feels great and other times the worst punishment ever devised. 🙄
Find The Fun
Start with something that you genuinely enjoy, that doesn’t feel like a chore. So it might be horse riding or paddle boarding. Sports like tennis or netball or rugby are great for that team spirit and camaraderie. These also have the added benefit of a specific time and place that gives you the accountability to attend. Once there, you will undoubtedly enjoy it and want to do it again.
Make it Social
Meet a friend for a run or play a sport together. Then think of it as a social event with your mate instead of ‘exercise’
What counts as exercise?
Also, recognise that exercise isn’t just a hard one hour workout in a gym being beasted by a personal trainer. It is anything that gets your heart rate up. And especially at first, can be short, 10 to 20 minutes is waaaay better than 0 minutes! Dancing is fun and enjoyable but is still physical activity.
Stick with it
Even if you miss a session, go right back to it at your first opportunity. Any change in habit takes time. Think of a new habit as planting a sapling, it’s young and new and you need to nurture it. It can be easily pulled out of the ground. But the more you look after it, roots will start to take hold and it gets harder to pull up. Meanwhile the old habit of not exercising is like a big old oak tree, impossible to pull up. BUT you can slowly chop bits off over time and make it smaller until eventually it dies. (I am DEFINITELY not saying you should chop bits off trees, we need them! But you get the analogy).
How To Build a Healthy Routine
Start small. Don’t be too ambitious or it will be too much and you wont be able to keep up with it. Give yourself something achievable or you will beat yourself up for not doing it.
Do something you enjoy. If you dread it, you wont do it. Simples.
Focus on one change at a time. Don’t join a gym and go on a diet at the same time. It’s too much all at once. See point 1. And actually, don’t go on a diet. Read this blog on Protein, Fats and Carbs and then this on Gut Health instead.
Use the power of community to boost your motivation when it might wane. Join a group class, a running club or a team sport. Whatever floats your boat. Support from your clan can often make the difference between exercising or not.
Nurture the sapling habit. It takes time and there will be ups and downs but go for the long haul. One session doesn’t make a healthy body. Likewise, one missed session doesn’t make you a bad person. 😂
Find out how we have fun at bootcamp
Climbing a mountain by doing the exercises on the board. Only going up to the next level if you correctly choose red or black from the pack of cards. First team to get to the top wins!
I have always enjoyed exercise but I still got side tracked at various points in my life. Work pressures. Menopause. Eating rubbish etc. And if I, who likes to exercise, can get out of the habit, anyone can fall off the wagon.
So I try to make our workouts as much fun as possible by throwing random games in. Dodgeball for a warm up on the green, Rock, Paper, Scissors in various forms both online and in person. I like to take games like Uno, Monopoly, Connect 4 etc and turn them into a workout so that we are more concerned with ‘winning’ than how many lunges we are doing. This also adds teamwork in so that our bootcampers get to know each other quickly.
We also have a group chat so if anyone misses a particularly funny session they get FOMO and make sure they attend the next one!
If you want to experience the fun that can be had while getting fitter, hit the button below to get a week completely FREE to try us out.