Starting a new habit can be challenging, and exercising is probably one of the hardest habits to create. If you’re successful, you can reap its benefits and improve your quality of life. So, let’s talk about why it is hard to make exercising a habit and how to consistently increase your chances of exercising well into your twilight years.
Common Pitfalls When Starting An Exercise Habit
Motivation is Finite
Many people use New Year’s Day as an opportunity to start fresh and make changes. However, many give up within a few weeks. Unfortunately, most New Year’s resolutions fail, even though they are positive and healthy.
Motivation isn’t constant, and it can only take you so far. Some days, you feel ready to tackle the world, while other days, you don’t. Motivation is fragile, especially when you don’t feel like you’re making progress or when other obligations sap your time and energy. Therefore, relying on motivation alone to establish your exercise habit will likely fail.
Doing the Wrong Exercises
Many people start exercising to lose weight or to look more aesthetically pleasing. They do specific exercises to meet those goals. For example, some may run to burn many calories or lift weights to bulk up.
Doing exercises you dislike is a recipe for failure. No amount of motivation can overcome your negative feelings about your workouts. You may skip or rush through your workouts and expect progress to happen faster than it is, which will only compound your frustration. Unfortunately, it’s only a matter of time before you give up.
Going All Out
What do you think would happen if you ran as fast as you could for all your runs or pedaled as hard as you could for every bike ride? You’d likely end up hating your workouts or becoming injured. As a result (you guessed it), you’ll stop exercising.
You may think the only way to exercise is to go all out to the point of total exhaustion. Fortunately, you don’t have to exercise that hard to improve your fitness.
Tips To Form An Exercise Habit
Plan And Prioritize Your Workouts
If you try to exercise every day without a plan, then you risk stopping when you break your streak. You will eventually miss a day due to an obligation, lack of motivation, or illness. If you don’t resume exercising within the following days, then there is a good chance you’ll stop altogether.
However, you’re more likely to exercise if you create a plan and prioritize it. If that means adding exercise to your calendar, then schedule it. As a result, you’re less likely to skip your workouts if you can schedule the rest of your life around them.
Most healthy adults should exercise at least 150 minutes at a moderate intensity each week. That may sound like a lot, but it’s not as hard to achieve as you think. For example, if you do a 30-minute brisk walk every day, you’ll rack up 210 minutes. That means you can include two rest days and still achieve the weekly recommendation of 150 minutes.
Track Your Progress
Keeping a fitness journal can help you stay accountable, provide insight, and keep you motivated. Your fitness journal contains all your efforts and successes. If you need motivation, you can look at your fitness journal and see your entire fitness journey. Also, your fitness journal can show you trends on what efforts are working and what may need tweaking to keep you on your path to success.
A fitness journal can be one of your most valuable tools when forming a new exercise habit. In fact, you can automatically track your efforts using an app, smart scale, and fitness tracker.
Practice Consistency over Intensity
It’s unnecessary to go all out and strive to hit your maximum heart rate every time. This will only lead to burnout, illness, or injury. As a result, you’ll stop exercising, which is the last thing you want to do.
Fortunately, you don’t have to raise your heart rate that high to improve your fitness. In fact, you should mix in rest days along with medium- and high-intensity workouts. Consistency is more important when creating a new habit than intensity, even if you only exercise 3 to 5 times a week.
For example, you can start walking for 30 minutes a day, five days a week. Once you exercise consistently, you can try different activities such as running, cycling, or something else. You’re improving your fitness as long as your workouts raise your heart rate to a moderate intensity.
If you’re starting or restarting your fitness journey, any consistent amount of exercise, no matter how small, is a step in the right direction.
Finding Exercises You Enjoy
Exercising should be fun and not a slog. You’ll want to do it when exercising is fun and may even look forward to it. As a result, you may form your exercise habit more quickly. Although, be careful. You don’t want to do too much, or you may have to stop due to an injury, and that’s no fun at all. Listen to your body and take a day off to recover if needed.
The Takeaway
An exercise habit is the best way to stay physically fit and mobile as you age. Exercise should be something you look forward to doing. Ideally, it would be best to strive to make exercising a lifelong activity instead of reaching a short-term goal such as a certain weight or body shape.
Motivation can be powerful enough to get you started. However, it isn’t enough to carry you through. Instead, you can increase your chances of forming an exercise habit by finding exercises you enjoy, prioritizing consistency over intensity, creating a plan with rest days, and tracking your progress.
FitTrend’s mission is to help you along your self-improvement journey, promote an active lifestyle, and help you achieve your goals. Our journal can help you track your activities and workouts. Also, FitTrend allows you to connect certain smartwatches and trackers to your account to make it easier for you to update your journal automatically. Create your account today and start using FitTrend for free!
Disclaimer: No content on this site should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
