When I was suffering from writer’s block, I found a great solution: commit to a Minimum Viable Daily Action (MVDA) for 100 days. I set the bar low (open the damn file and make one edit) and easily surpassed it because what I really needed to do was just start. I finished my edits on the 100th day. Pop the champagne!
If you’re on a diet, reaching your goal weight is a huge accomplishment. It’s something you can point to with pride and say, “I did that.” Lord knows keeping it off is not easy, but you don’t need to keep setting new weight loss goals for the rest of your life.
Fitness is a different beast. There is no finish line. No day when you can sit back and say, “There! Glad that’s done!” The Tyranny of Fitness is that it never ends and it never gets better. The more time goes by, the harder and longer you have to run just to stay where you are. Oh, you might set a specific goal – run a 10K, say – but then what? Hang up your shoes and admire your medal? The minute you do, all that lovely fitness starts to melt away, and before you know it, you’re panting up the stairs again. Put those shoes back on your aching feet and train for a marathon. And you’re still not done. Because the Torture. Never. Stops.
So here’s my question: How do you stay fit when you know it’s a treadmill with no end and you’re not a sportsy type of person who just loves fitness-making activities for their own sake? I’m serious. I will post a follow-up with your best suggestions.
On your marks…
Photo by Oscar Keys on Unsplash
For me, I have to like what I’m doing. So I do it for enjoyment I enjoy speed walking and weight lifting, so I do those.
I’m not sure that I exercise. I might run 3, 5, 10 miles, bike 100 miles, do stretches or yoga or QiGong, split wood, move dirt, but each of those activities are themselves the goal, something I do and love doing (even if I curse it in the moment), and only secondarily a means to something else.
I guess that makes me one of those “sportsy types”, who loves these activities for their own sake.
Definitely sportsy.
Fitness and weight loss are (or should be) exactly the same. They’re both outcomes of living a healthy lifestyle. Eating nutritious food most of the time, breaking up sitting time and being active. There are unquestionably benefits to things that get your heart rate up and doing resistance exercises, but if not wanting to “exercise” is keeping you pinned to the couch, let it go. Just get up and move.
It’s easy to start. It’s harder to keep going. I have the same problem with remembering to drink water and take vitamins. I mean well, but whatever system I come up with to make it a habit falls by the wayside after a few weeks.
Habits. My strategy has been to add to a given habit to reach the goals I avoid. I started small with one thing that I do daily – make cocoa when I get up. I added in stretching my legs on a stool to also gain better balance while the microwave was heating. Weeks later, I added setting out my vitamins to take with the cocoa. Next I added heating up a hot pack for my back and more balancing while the microwave did its thing. I can stand on one foot for extended time now.
Exercise. I noticed I was feel pretty crappy, so I bought a treadmill this winter. It lives in the living room. I read while I walk fast on it, I could also watch tv, but I have good books now on my tablet. I gradually increased speed and time.
I feel so much better now. Sometimes, I wear a step tracker. I find that I get almost as much walking when I’m gardening as the treadmill gave me. Small gains feel good.
Pro Tip: Do forms of exercise that you enjoy. Learn to enjoy forms of exercise that you do!
Before moving to Utah while working full time, it was hard to get in the speed walking (laps around our townhouse complex) and music was my vice while doing it. Now we try to get in 6-10 miles per week outside on mountain trails because I’d rather do that any day than the treadmill. If I have to do the treadmill, I either wirelessly send a playlist to the speakers and jam out or watch TV and try not to look at the treadmill screen (it progresses so slowly! I love hiking. It’s not considered exercise in my brain.
A great man once said, “Dance every day of your life.” Even while vegging out in front of the TV, whenever the silly music starts Chuck and I leap up and silly dance for the duration. And we hike daily out back to visit the burro who lives in the hills behind our house. Of course, monumental vanity and a massive body dysmorphic disorder help quite a bit…