Exercise is one of the most important things you can do for yourself in terms of your health. Eating properly, sleeping well, educating yourself, and reducing stresses in your life are also crucial, of course, but if you don’t exercise regularly – trying to get at least thirty minutes of exercise each day – you really won’t feel the benefits as much, and you won’t be as healthy as you otherwise could be
This can have a detrimental effect on your life, meaning you can’t do as much, get sicker more often, or suffer mental health. Therefore, knowing that exercise is so important, you should also know how to get started and how to stick to your routine. Read on for some advice.
Find A Workout You Enjoy
Sometimes it’s not that – or not just that – you don’t have any motivation to exercise. In fact, sometimes you might really want to, knowing that it can make such a big, positive difference to your life. The problem is that you simply don’t enjoy it. This will always be off-putting; doing anything unpleasant will feel like a chore no matter what benefits it might bring.
If this is how you feel about exercising, don’t worry; there is a solution. It’s highly likely that you would enjoy it much more if you found a workout that you like. Going to the gym isn’t for everyone; using a treadmill is something some find boring. Likewise, playing sports won’t be what everyone wants to do. So, take it upon yourself to find out what it is you do want to do.
Maybe you love nature, so a walk through the woods is your ideal kind of exercise. Perhaps it’s swimming. Maybe you don’t like anything that’s too formal, and you simply want to take the stairs and cycle to work rather than drive.
Anything that raises your heart rate is good exercise, so find something you enjoy, even if it’s unconventional, and you’ll be much more likely to stick with getting fitter.
Find Something You’re Good At
Everyone has a desire to be good at whatever it is they’re doing, even if, in the long-term, being good at something has no particular benefit. However, the better we are at something, the more likely it is we’ll keep doing it; we get a sense of achievement and pleasure at seeing positive results.
This is why it can be a good idea to find a workout or perhaps a sport that you’re good at and concentrate on that. If you have a knack for tennis, for example, keep working at it. You’ll get the exercise you’re looking for, and you’ll enjoy yourself, but you’ll also be able to prove that you’re good at what you’re doing, either to yourself or to others. It’s a small thing, and it’s not necessary for terms of how well the exercise will work for you, but if it helps you stick to a good routine, it’s certainly something to bear in mind.
Learn About Exercise
The more you know about health and fitness, the more motivated you will be to include exercise elements within your day-to-day life. If you know what good you are doing to and for your body – and your mind – it will be so much easier to ensure you carve out enough time to push forward, even if it’s only ten minutes a day. Therefore, learning more about exercise and what it can do, particularly how the different kinds of exercises you are capable of will improve your health, is crucial.
It might even be that you develop enough interest to want to enter the medical field as a career by learning about health and fitness. In that case, there are professional courses you can take, such as an RN to MSN family nurse practitioner program, that will teach you all you need to know and open up your future too.
Put It In Your Calendar
If you don’t find it easy to stick to a workout routine or any kind of exercise because you are busy and don’t have a lot of time, then add the half an hour or so you need each day to your calendar. Then, make it an appointment just as you would with anything else, and ensure that you meet your deadlines. You wouldn’t keep ignoring an important meeting or the due date for any assignments you need to complete, for example. Knowing how important these are, you would plan for them accordingly. So why not do the same for your exercise routine?
The key to remember is that you shouldn’t push too hard right from the start. If you’re just beginning and you expect to be able to work out – in whatever way suits you best – five times a week but only manage three or four, you’ll feel as though you have failed (were in reality, it’s great that you’ve done something). Be realistic when you’re planning what you can do – if the day really is jam-packed, trying to add an extra half an hour might be a challenge, so plan to skip a day as long as you still do exercise at other times during the week. Be sensible and plan ahead, and you should get a lot more done.
Break Your Workout Up
If even half an hour every day seems to be too much to fit in along with everything else, then you could skip a day as we mentioned above. However, if you find that you are skipping too many, or simply using this as an excuse not to exercise at all, then you’ll need to find another way to do things, and that could be breaking your workout up into smaller chunks.
We’ve said that thirty minutes a day is a good place to aim for, but we didn’t say that those thirty minutes had to be completed all in one go. If it’s easier, take fifteen minutes when you wake up and another fifteen minutes during lunch, for example. Or exercise for three ten-minute bursts throughout the day. You’ll still be exercising, but it won’t seem so daunting, and you’ll be able to reach your target no matter what.
Have Goals
Exercising just for the sake of exercising is actually a good thing – you’ll get fitter and healthier as a result. However, if you have no particular goal in mind, then finding motivation on some days is going to be very difficult, and you might be tempted to miss a few workouts just because you don’t really know what you’re meant to be heading towards.
This is why making goals that relate to your exercise routine is a great idea. You’ll be able to see how far you’ve come and what is still left to do, and as a result, you’ll be much more motivated to keep going. Once you see that what you’re doing is working, you’ll want to continue, and the more you do, the more progress you’ll make, so you’ll be even more motivated.
