You Dont Have To Be An Exercise Hater

There are people who will swear up and down that they loathe exercise of any kind and find it to be a burdensome chore. Although I believe people when they say this, I also want to know why they think this and how they came to this belief. There can often be an underlying cause that when addresses properly can help people overcome this loathing.

I understand and agree that when you are first starting to exercise it sucks. Your muscles ache, your chest burns, you feel uncoordinated and awkward, your heart beats a mile a minute, you might feel light headed, sick to your stomach and weak among other unpleasant things. If exercise were serendipitous from day 1, everyone would do it. It takes time for your body to adjust, especially if there has been a significant amount of time since you last worked out. Far too often in all aspects of life we are looking for the quick fix and not willing to put in the work for an long term results. If you struggled during your first attempt at exercise, dont use that as an excuse to stop trying and conculde that you are just not the exercise type. Thats bullshit, our bodies were built for actvity not to just sit around on our asses. It may not be easy at first, but stick with it and it will become less painful and you will experience the endorphins that kick in when you exercise that make you feel good.

I can honestly say that I have never regretted a workout but I have regretted not working out. There are days when I dont always feel like going on my training run or going to the gym and lifting. If I know that this isnt due to over training then I will usually make myself go anyway and when I am done, I feel tons better and much happier than I would be if I sat on my couch and watched tv. It makes you feel good for accomplishing something and it can alleviate stress and usually a bad mood. If I take a break from exercising, within a few days there is a noticable change in my mood.

Dont be afraid to try different forms of exercise either. Do what you enjoy and you are most likely to stick with it. If you hate running then dont make that your basis of exercise because you are making in that much harder on yourself to get motivated. I dont like group exercise classes because I am not the dancing, choreographing type of person so I dont make that part of my exercise routine. A lot of people love it though and it works for them. The important thing is to find what works for you.

If you want to do more than just be healthy though and weight loss is your goal, then I have some bad news for you. Exercise works better than cutting calories when trying to lose weight. A recent study compared the weight loss of two groups, one group restricted calories only and the other group excecised only. Researchers found that although both groups lost weight, the participants of the dieting group lost muscle mass during their weight loss, while the exercising group did not. Losing muscle mass will decrease your metabolism and make it more difficult to continue losing weight. Besides, who wants to reduce what they can eat when they can balance some of that out with exercise at eat more? I adore my long runs in part because I know I can eat some stuff that is normally too high in calories and/or I can eat more. I love food, I really do, and if I can enjoy more of it by exercising regularly thats a huge bonus.

Here is so more bad news for you exercise haters. You have probably heard that it is reccomended that you do 30 minutes of exercise 5 days a week. Well this is somewhat misleading. That is the minimum amount of exercise you should do in order to see basic health benefits. If you want to lose weight, you are looking at an hour almost every day. The reason they shy away making that more widely known is because they dont want to scare people away from exercise entirely. They think people will hear that amount and just throw in the towel and sit back down with a bag of Cheetos and the remote. I would rather be told the real facts though instead of getting frustrated when that evening walk just isnt taking off the pounds. And yes your metabolism does slow down in your 30s, mostly because you lose muscle mass so if you were able to maintain a svelt figure in your 20s without much work, your 30s are probably going to be a different story.

The bottom line is exercise will make you leaner, it will make you healthier and it will make you happier. If this can be accomplished in a pill you know you would be all over that, but there is no instant gratification here. Just some hard work and sweat, which can actually be enjoyable. It is sort of like getting a tattoo. You know it is going to hurt and you probably arent going to find the feeling of the needle penetrating your skin very pleasant, but you do derive pleasure and pride from the fact that you were able to sit through the pain and get it done. The same can be said about exercising. My quads may be screaming at you when you are squating and although in the moment you are probably not thinking ooh yeah, that feels like heaven, when you are done you do get a lot of pleasure out of it.