Everyone knows that the real benefits of exercise, in terms of weight loss and overall health, come in the long term. The problem is too may people get bored with their exercise routine in the short term.
The trick to maintaining a long-term exercise commitment? Get out of your rut! Vary your routine! Make it interesting…and therefore more enjoyable and then maybe you won’t get bored so easily!
How? Here are some suggestions:
- Try cross training – walk on Mondays and Wednesdays, go to the gym or do circuit training on Tuesdays and Thursdays. When you vary or combine routines, you banish boredom.
- Enlist the help and company of a friend! Exercise is far more enjoyable when you’re doing it with someone and not alone. It’s hard to make excuses when you have someone prodding you!
- Purchase an exercise video – dance, Pilates, tai chi, aerobics - and work out at home some days!
- Divide your exercise schedule into more convenient time slots – instead of 30 minutes five times a week – do three 10-minute intervals.
- Join a class – it can be entertaining, as well as beneficial, and you may even meet some new friends who will keep you motivated!
- Add exercise to you daily routines in subtle ways – park as far out in the parking lot as you can and walk to the store, take the stairs instead of the elevator, take a 20-minute lunch break and walk, walk around the field at your children’s outdoor games, or get a dog that needs to be walked!
There are plenty of ways to counter those excuses that keep you from exercising. Your mission is to find one that works for you so the excuses fall away as quickly as the pounds you’re bound to lose by sticking to your goals!
Dr. Steven L. Levy is a chiropractor in Woodbury.
