21
May
Reasons to Exercise
Physical exercise has always been a very difficult discipline for me. Exercise is just something that I have never enjoyed. I have many friends that truly enjoy running, weight lifting, or other exercise. I’ve never enjoyed it. Over the years I have been able to discipline myself to exercise regularly for short periods of time, but they have never lasted long term and I’ve never gotten to the point where I really enjoyed it.
A couple years ago I set a goal to walk for 45- to 60-minutes every day for 40 days. I’ve often heard that it takes 21 days to form a habit. I reasoned that this the extra 19 days would greatly help in solidifying the habit. I also knew that 40 is the Biblical number of completion and testing so that’s why I chose it. The routine lasted for about 42 days. On day 43 I thought that it was time to test whether it was a habit or not, so I took just that one day off. I never got back into the routine.
I’ve started walking 45- to 60-minutes a day again. My neighborhood, and the other nearby neighborhoods, all have rolling hills which makes for a good walk with periods of both challenge and ease. I will probably need continual fuel to stay the course so I’ll be looking for reasons to exercise—as I find them, I’ll blog about them here. I’ve even added a new category for ‘Diet and Exercise’.
I haven’t set a goal for 40 days or anything like that this time. Now my goal is to “learn to enjoy exercise”. OK, I guess that isn’t a goal, that’s an outcome vision. I haven’t yet figured out how to quantify “enjoy” so that I will know when I’ve reached my goal. If you have ideas for how to express this as a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely), feel free to leave a comment with your ideas.
If you have ideas for reasons to exercised that you would like me to consider, feel free to email them to me at webmaster@rickyspears.com.
Technorati Tags: exercise, walking, fitness, health, diet, weight loss
I’m not sure how to express this as a SMART goal, but I think you’ll be on they way to that if you find your day’s less pleasant because you didn’t exercise.
I used to walk, daily. 1 hour, Monday through Friday. The weirdness was that, as much as I disliked exercising, I couldn’t go more than a day without. If I did, my legs would ache all day. (Yes, Sundays were a pain.)
Knowing that my legs were going to hurt if I didn’t exercise sometimes got me to put in a half-hour on Sunday mornings. But I never really came to love it.
I dropped the habit after 1.5 years, cold turkey, due to a stressful period in my life which altered my daily routine. After 2 weeks of very high stress levels and a distinctly different daily routine, the habit was completely gone.
If you learn how to enjoy exercise, please share! I’ve never really enjoyed it either, and have never learned how to enjoy it.
January 10th, 2007 at 5:43 pmHey, just checking in to see how the exercise habit is going, hope you are keeping it up.
January 31st, 2007 at 8:17 pmAnne – Thanks for writing. Sad to say that I still haven’t developed any kind of exercise habit except the habit of avoiding it.
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January 31st, 2007 at 8:37 pm[...] few months, but I always seem to return to my old habits. I’ve blogged before about how much I hate to exercise, even though it is a negative-time [...]
July 20th, 2007 at 11:03 am