At times motivating yourself to exercise can be hard. Believe it or not, I find myself having that internal battles of whether to workout or not sometimes. Sometimes I’m exhausted and have no energy to exercise. Sometimes I procrastinate and think about working out but never actually doing anything.
The bottom line is that I’m human and you’re human and these types of things happen to us and are going to continue to happen to us. It’s all about understanding why and how it happens.
In terms of motivation for exercise, there are a 5 stages in which your mind and body cycles through.
Stage 1: You’re inactive and not thinking about becoming more active. You would place yourself in this stage if you do no physical activity and don’t intend to start in the next six months. This stage can also be referred to as “not thinking about change”.
Stage 2: The inactive and thinking about becoming more active. This can apply to you if you don’t engage in physical activity but intend to start in the next six months. This stage is hereafter referred to as “thinking about change”.
Stage 3: You’re doing some sort of physical activity. You participate in some physical activity but not accumulating at least 30 minutes of at least moderate-intensity physical activity on most, preferably all, days of the week. At this point you may or may not intend to become more physically active.
Stage 4: You’re doing enough physical activity. Here you participate in the recommended amounts of physical activity but have done so for less than six months and may or may not continue this level of physical activity.
Stage 5: You’re making physical activity a habit. In this stage you have participated in the recommended amounts of physical activity for six months or longer.
When looking at these stages you might find that you have or are in a couple stages at once. In reality throughout your life you’ll probably move back and forth with some of the stages.
For example, if you are in the thinking about change stage (stage 2) and move right into the doing enough physical activity stage (stage 4), accumulating at least 30 minutes of at least moderate-intensity activity at least five days a week, this may not result in long-term change.
That is, if you skip over to the stage of doing some physical activity (stage 3), you may not be effectively prepared for the rigors of daily activity, or for the physical demands of that amount of activity or for the time demand on your schedule.
If you develops some foot or knee pain or decide that the two and a half hours per week you’re devoting to exercising takes too much time away from work, you might say, “Screw this physical activity stuff. It just doesn’t fit into my life, so I am not going to do it.”
The potential risk here is that not only will you slide back to an earlier stage, but also slide right back to the “not thinking about change” stage rather than the “thinking about change” stage.
This is why it’s important for you to properly plan out your exercise schedule and find different ways to motivate yourself. Once you make exercise a permanent part of your lifestyle your body will thank you and reward you in your later years.
