The Exercise Habit
I had always heard that regular exercise was part of a healthy lifestyle. Once I committed to health I needed to figure out how to incorporate regular exercise into my day-to-day.
Past experiences had been pretty frustrating, usually including a combination of an energized fast start, moving to a dip in momentum once fatigue built-up, shortly after fading with disappointment as results didn’t match effort and the prospect of keeping it up seemed like a daunting effort. There had to be a better way.
After reflecting I realized one mistake was that in every attempt the focus had been on short term results, looking to face the problem head on and resolve it swiftly and permanently. While that approach had served me well in other areas, exercise and health in general is a long game, the result of what one does day in, day out. It’s never done and now I could see that.
Switching the mindset and reframing around long term health brought up a key component I was missing. Sustainability. If I had to exercise for the rest of my life, I had to come up with ways to incorporate it into my routine in a sustainable way.
The Blue Zones initiative, which studied the patterns of communities around the globe with the best longevity, proposes that movement, often embedded in work and recreation, is the form of exercise that leads to health and longevity. In those communities, people exercise by walking and biking to go places, doing physical labor, tending to a garden, caring for the house and family, playing with the kids. No gyms, no marathons, but no sitting for 10 hours a day either.
One interesting observation for me was that their form of exercise is fully integrated into their active and productive lives in an extremely convenient way. While one may not voluntarily choose to be outside doing farm work in a cold rainy day, it brings about healthy benefits without adding a to-do to their day, somewhere to go or something to plan for in order to get their daily dose. It just happens.
As I moved into action, my key principles would become sustainability and convenience. If I wanted to develop a long term habit I had to adhere to these principles to make it work. I also had to start small with a long term view and build on a base of successes. I had to trust that those small steps overtime would lead to the outcome I was looking for.
On the convenience front, exercising at home with as little equipment as possible has been key for me to be consistent. Even when traveling, there’s little that beats the convenience of just finding a bit of space to do body weight exercises. Cardio may require a bit more planning or equipment, but I find that incorporating walking into each day is a great way to get movement while keeping up with to-dos. Choosing movement over sitting time after time quickly adds up.
As for sustainability, I found that I had to take the opposite approach I had taken in the past. I had to start with a workout that was so easy that, when combined with the convenience factor, was basically excuse-proof. Think of something like 10 sit-ups and 5 push-ups in however many sets needed to finish, and 15 mins of walking throughout the day.
It was important for me to resist the drive to do more. The primary goal here was to implement a new long-term habit. When starting even that easy of a routine can create change. After a while the habit started to kick into auto-pilot and I started to add and change the exercises, backing off anytime I felt it was too much too soon for the long term goal. I made it so I was virtually guaranteed to succeed and later I could build on that success to work towards more specific health and fitness goals. I had the habit installed and was now someone who exercised regularly.
It’s been over a decade and the same principles continue to work for me. The specific exercises change based on health and fitness goals, but a day without exercise is a rare occasion and feels strange as if something is missing or if I didn’t brush my teeth. It feels good to move daily.
