How I Learned to Love Exercise

Finding joy in the things you need to do.

Before/After (roughly 1,5 year apart)

Little over a year ago I was obese, unhealthy, and exercised roughly 3 times per… year.

Today I’m 25 kg lighter, ran a few half-marathons, and keep a steady exercise routine of ~5 hours a week, mostly running and calisthenics.

It was all made possible because I was determined to find a way to actually enjoy it. I knew I had to incorporate physical activity into my daily routine, but I tried (and failed) many times already.

This time I made making it fun the number one priority.

Joy as a Cornerstone of Consistency

Physical activity has many features that can make it fun.

1. The activity itself releases dopamine.
2. It’s easy to track and notice progress to boost your motivation.
3. There is a seemingly limitless variety of sports and activities you can do — everyone can find something interesting.
4. It can be performed with other people which naturally opens up further funnification of the activity.

There is much potential here, but when you start it’s actually not that easy to tap into that. It’s tiring, mostly unpleasant, and the progress isn’t really easy to notice in the first few weeks.

This time I started with a mindset that having fun with exercise is possible — I saw many people who achieved that, and I was determined to push past that dip.

I believe finding joy in activities you want to do is crucial for successful habit creation. The process of pushing yourself over and over takes a lot of energy and managing your energy levels is way more important than managing your time.

It’s easy to think that all we need is discipline and one of those “Build your Abs in 30 days” programs we see everywhere. While efficiency is surely a positive feature, finding joy in what you do, and appreciating your accomplishments along the way is way more important.

If you ever feel like you hate what you do — stop, it’s not going to work. Change your routine, reduce the intensity or duration, and try again. Efficiency is a stellar long-term goal to build towards, but it’s an obnoxious starter.

Consistency is the efficiency “hack” you’re looking for, and finding joy in your activities helps with this immensely.

Daily Effort is your true Goal

My progress in running way exceeded my expectations both in terms of how fast I was progressing as well as how easy it felt.

The thing is, progress in running was the one thing I actually didn’t care about.

I cared about my weight loss and I cared about my weightlifting progress, but running? I was happy to be able to run longer, but it didn’t seem like a crucial thing.

The catch is I just LIKE running. It quickly became my favorite activity. If I wanted to do something extra running was always my number one. It’s chilling and steady, it feels both satisfying to do, while not being unpleasant.

I just wore my running shoes and made the daily effort, not worrying at all about efficiency. I was there to have fun and do something that would raise my heart rate.

It worked wonderfully.

Start Slowly

Injuries are your worst enemy.

It’s very easy to injure yourself at those early stages which oftentimes would mean an obligatory break, that ruins both the progress as well as habit creation process.

I know you want to dive deep into this new exercise program you found online. Instead, I would suggest that you actually listen to your body.

If you feel like you would rather stay at home and watch TV, ignore this sneaky voice and do what you’ve planned to do. But if you feel actually tired and the exercise seems more troublesome than usual don’t be afraid to stop.

Our bodies need time to adapt. It will get better. And it will get better faster if you let your body do its job.

When I started my first months consisted mostly of walking and riding a bike with some small amount of running here and there.

It doesn’t need to be fancy. Aim for consistently doing the activity you enjoy, it’s actually very easy to slowly scale up from that.

Know your Why(s)

The first days and weeks are easy, we’re riding the wave of motivation and all feels good.

As you know it will inevitably fall off and sooner or later you will need to ask yourself why the hell you are actually doing that.

Personally, for every activity I’m trying to do consistently and long-term, I try to come up with two separate “Whys”.

1. One for good days — something awesome I’m aiming at — to energize, motivate, and bring me joy.
2. Another one for bad days — something I consider crucial to my existence — to remind me that “not feeling like it” is a poor excuse.

For my exercise habits nowadays it looks like this.

1. Good days — I want to run a marathon and learn some cool calisthenics progressions (for the pure awesomeness of those).
2. Bad days — maintaining a healthy lifestyle is a non-negotiable for me, and being fast, strong, and agile would be irreplaceable if I would need to defend myself or my loved ones one day.

Celebrate your Achievements. Then move on.

It may seem like semantics but I’m using a little bit different naming for my goal system than most of the people.

Directions are my big picture, lifestyle Grand Projects I want to complete. Those would be things like “Run a marathon in 1–3 years”. The time here is just a ballpark, not a deadline.

Goals are what I call my daily and weekly effort (habits basically). Things like 30 minutes daily cardio (walking is still fine here btw.). They’re 100% about ACTIONS — things I can control. That’s the only thing I actually care about and have a specific plan for what I want to accomplish.

Checkpoints are small steps along the way to my Grand Projects. Those are concrete RESULTS of my daily effort. Example here would be “Run 10k under 60 mins”. I never plan to achieve them in a specific time period, I’m just happy that I did.

Checkpoints are my Achievements — things I celebrate, note in my journal, and go back to when I need motivation. And then, after a successful PR or an especially long run, I just go for another daily effort.

Give yourself a Chance. And then Another One.

I believe lifestyle experiments are very valuable and the best way to interact with the world. There is only so much thinking you can do. If the new idea emerges it needs to be tested.

I probably tried to incorporate physical activity over 10 times in my life. I failed every time for different reasons, but I also learned new things with each new try.

And then, one time, it started as always but it clicked. I tried my “joy-focused approach” and it worked. I still struggled with strength training but I figured it out too after a while — it was easier with the knowledge I had from my successful running journey.

I can’t promise you that this method will work, but I can promise that change is possible.

You may need to try other things. Or maybe even the same things, just slightly modified.

Just don’t give up. Give yourself another chance.

Closing Thoughts

If you managed to incorporate physical activity into your life already I’ll be happy to hear what YOU considered transformational in your journey. And if you decide to try my approach, please let me know the effect of your experiment.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little article. Wishing you all a wonderful day.