Exercise and Nutrition Motivation Tips
My personal experience with a solid exercise and nutrition mindset. Along with how this has helped me consistently work out for 7 years.
Friendly Disclaimer: I am not a professional motivational speaker, trainer, or bodybuilder. Just an average dude who has been able to consistently work out for a long period of time. Hopefully, a couple of these tips resonate with you and can help with your motivation!
I enjoy being as healthy as I can and have made it one of my main priorities. Working out consistently for any amount of time is a great feat so here are some of my personal tips on how to maintain a good mentality to do so.
Why are you getting in shape in the first place?
Knowing the reasons as to why you are working out will help you stay motivated as you start off. This can be different for every person. For example, my initial motivation was to look good. Pretty cliche huh?? I know, but as a young single male, it’s what got me that jumpstart. I am thankful for it though as it kept me going when I first started.
Some points of motivation that I would recommend to the old Paul
- Builds Discipline: One human virtue that can sometimes be overlooked nowadays is creating a level of discipline within yourself. Having a high level of discipline when it comes to your personal health can translate into other aspects of your life as well. For me, it was very much like a snowball effect.
- Increased Confidence: Whenever you meet a personal goal that you set you gain this nice warm sense of achievement. I noticed a huge increase in my own confidence knowing that I was able to achieve the things that I set my mind to.
- You Feel So Much Better: It is now becoming way more understood that the foods we choose to eat can affect our emotions. The same goes for exercise. I have strongly experienced both of these on a personal level. This is now the number 1 motivator for me. Once you get past that wall of establishing a routine, you will largely notice these benefits!
- Decreased Anxiety: The world likes to throw a lot of shit at us that can mess with us. Having a routine activity like working out can distract you from the needless anxiety-triggering distractions that the world likes to ever so conveniently offer. Also, just the pure fact that exercise made me feel better decreased my anxiety greatly.
You are not a robot 🤖
If you graduated high school around 2010 here’s some possible nostalgia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve2WTaP3EWc
I am one of those very self-critical types of people so this was really helpful for me to realize. I tend to expect myself to be 100% perfect 100% of the time. With this said, it was important for me to understand that I am human and will not always have a perfect level of motivation all of the time. The goal is to be motivated as much as you can but don’t stress out about it if you aren’t. Motivation will come and go. Just do your best to stay as consistent as possible during these motivation swings. 👍
Workout in the morning if possible ☕️
A while back, I read a book called The Miracle Morning (affiliate link). This book is what really got me fully convinced about working out in the morning. I naturally was never a morning person so this wasn’t something I was necessarily ecstatic about giving a try. With this said I was still open to it.
Looking for an even more convincing use case for caffeine?
One of the main things that persuaded me to work out in the morning was an extra excuse to take caffeine. Knowing that the caffeine was helping me both get out of bed and enhance my workout was all the persuasion I needed.
I know this isn’t the most “purest” way to gain workout motivation. Since getting into a workout routine can be somewhat of a grind, it was a tradeoff that I was willing to take. From my perspective, the pros of constantly exercising outweigh the possible cons of taking caffeine every morning.
Great jump start to your day
Once I adjusted to working out early in the morning, I have been unable to exercise any other time of the day. This is because it is so amazing. Being able to say you got your physical activity knocked out and still have the rest of the day ahead of you is huge! For me, that good old post-workout endorphin release made going to work a lot more pleasurable. The side sense of achievement also makes you ready to bend the rest of your day over and schmack it.
So there ya have it! These are some of the methods that have helped me stay motivated all of these years. If you are just starting this journey I wish you the best of luck! Feel free to comment if you happen to have any other workout motivators that I didn’t cover in this article. I would love to hear others’ methods of staying motivated as there can be so many.
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