Keys to Developing an Exercise Habit

OK, stand up, walk around for a minute, and press the “reset” button on your attention span, because everything you’ve read so far may not help you if you don’t really focus on this section. We know exercise is good for us. We’re even glad when we do it. Yet 80% of Americans fail to meet the government’s minimum recommendations for physical activity. Why is it so hard to sustain an exercise habit? Here are a few very important things to keep in mind as you work toward joining the 20 percent:

• Step 1: LOVE YOUR BODY!: If you can easily come up with a list of specific "imperfections" about your body (things that you likely wish were different about your physical appearance), congratulations!; you are a normal human being influenced by modern western culture! For fun, Jared offers his incomplete list of body image issues: "I have small beady eyes; my teeth are crooked; I have belly fat that doesn't go away despite my best efforts; my jaw is small and wimpy; I have scrawny 'chicken legs'; and my hair has gone gray prematurely." Now go ahead and think of your own physical "imperfections" and notice what immediately comes to mind. These aren't new thoughts, are they? Are they helpful?

Why do we have these unhelpful thoughts and where do they come from? The short answer is that we are biologically primed to want to look healthy and that we live in a culture that places an extremely high value on physical appearance. As a result, we often work under the assumption that once we look better we'll be more worthy of love and appreciation (from others and from ourselves), but this is just plain false. You (and your physical body) are already completely worthy of love and appreciation; it's ok if there are things about your physical appearance you would like to work on, but doing so will not make you any more deserving of appreciation (from yourself or others) than you already are. Moreover, if you start from a place of deep appreciation for your body and what it can do for you, you are more likely to take good care of it.

For just a few moments, take a look at your body. Letting go of any judgements about how you might wish it was different, consider all the things this body allows you to do. Reflect on the experiences that you regularly enjoy through each of the senses. Think of the many things you've done with this body: have you climbed a mountain? gone waterskiing? learned to play a musical instrument? given birth to a child?! This body is amazing! Consider what's going on inside: complex life-sustaining processes that we're mostly oblivious to that require no conscious effort on our part. Breathing, digestion, metabolism, circulation, hormonal and neurotransmitter activity.... We have an incomprehensible network of trillions of synapses in the brain that give us the experiences of sensation, perception, movement, language, memory, emotion, motivation, anticipation, imagination, and more! This body is your vehicle for experiencing the wonder of life! And yet when you look in the mirror the first thing that comes to mind is "My chin looks fat"?! 

Maybe you have some physical limitations that keep you from doing things you used to do or would like to do. What can your body do? Can you listen to your favorite music? taste great food? notice the scent of fresh rainfall? feel your child's cheek against your own as she gives you a hug? watch a vibrant sunset? This body is a miracle, and a gift, and when we understand this we are more likely to give it the care it needs to thrive.

Appreciating your body is so important that we've created a "mini-module" on this very topic. Consider all the mental, physical, and emotional efforts you've previously invested in trying to look a certain way. As a personal experiment, would you be willing to re-allocate just a fraction of that time and effort toward learning how to better appreciate your body as it already is, and then see if it's easier to maintain an exercise habit? Maybe you'll even end up looking great as a happy consequence. What works better: exercising so that you can (maybe, eventually) love your body? or exercising because you love your body? You'll never know until you test it out for yourself.                         

• Do it for the Right Reasons: As an extension of the point above, consider honestly whether your primary reason for working out has been to look better. Who doesn’t want less fat and more muscle? And much of the time that is the reason that initially gets us off the couch. However, there are a few long-term problems with this motivation, and now you are about to hear what you may not want to know: Exercise alone does little to change your weight. (Did you just have a flashback to when you were told there was no Santa Claus?) Here’s the skinny on exercise and weight: Weight happens about 80 percent in the kitchen and 20 percent in the gym. Human bodies are just too efficient. A two-second, 100 calorie brownie bite equals 15-20 minutes of brisk walking.

The problem with high expectations for exercise to change your weight is this: When you get out there and bust your tail all week, then step on the scale and see little or no change (because it can take months before visual improvements occur, and because of compensatory eating due to a revved up appetite), then most of us are discouraged and eventually quit. Having unrealistic expectations of how quickly exercise will transform you into a swimsuit model will only bring frustration and a speedy end to your convictions. Moreover, it immediately labels exercise as a punishment. Right out of the gate you are essentially thinking, “Look at what I have to endure now because I’m so fat”. “This is my punishment for being a pig.” (Hopefully you don’t think that exactly, but you get the idea.) If you are exercising for the primary reason that you are unhappy with how you look because you enjoyed food in excess, and exercise is the method to correct it, then exercise is the opposite of enjoying food, and therefore, an unpleasant chore. (If there’s no Santa, there’s no reason to be good all year.)

But don’t scrap your workout plans just yet. Exercise will make you leaner and stronger... eventually, with consistency and calorie control. In fact, it may be essential for long term weight loss maintenance. Ninety percent of people who have lost weight and kept it off exercise an average of an hour per day. (http://www.nwcr.ws/Research/default.htm) But keep the bulk of the remedy to weight in the kitchen, where it belongs. In contrast, when you exercise because you want to increase your well-being, you don’t have to step on a scale to see if it worked. You immediately feel better. You can compare how you felt before and after the workout and know right away that it worked! When you exercise for stress reduction, you are immediately less stressed. When you exercise for self-efficacy, you immediately feel empowered and accomplished. When you exercise for sharper mental function, you immediately think more clearly and creatively. After learning what exercise does not only for your body, but for your brain, mind, and mood, then your reasons for exercising will fall into their rightful places with looking good coming in last.

• Do What You Enjoy: You are not going to keep doing something you have to force yourself to do, and since the goal is a lifelong habit, you might as well find something you enjoy. “But that’s the problem,” you say, ”I don’t like any exercise.” Let’s explore that point. Most people like what they are good at; the things that come easily. To an unconditioned body, a grueling workout is anything but easy. Of course you don’t like to huff and puff and struggle along. Who would? You’re not good at it…yet. Working too intensely for a person’s fitness level is one of the reasons 50% of those who start an exercise program drop out within the first 6 months. They finally muster up the willpower to get out and exercise after being sedentary for a while, and jump into their definition of what a workout should be. Working too hard for one’s current fitness level is an unpleasant experience. So, the next day when it’s time to do it all over again they remember the discomfort and feelings of inadequacy. Willpower is a limited commodity. Why not start out doing something you can be a champ at? How about walking? You’ve been doing it since you were 12 months old now. I’ll bet you are pretty good at it. So, go for a walk. Be as lazy as you feel like. Start at ten minutes a day and soon you’ll want to go longer. Ease up to half an hour. Before you know it, you’ll feel like walking faster. Then one day, you might feel like jogging. You’ll jog for a few minutes and then feel like walking again. Maybe it’ll be six months before your half hour of walk/jog turns into all jog. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. You can go at whatever pace your body and mind are ready for. As you’re cultivating the habit of consistent exercise it’s not about the intensity of the work out, it’s about training your mind and nourishing the habit so the motivation becomes intrinsic (comes from inside you as opposed to an external source). When the habit is ingrained and your body is ready, you’ll naturally want to increase your intensity. But, as you are developing the habit, it’s not a workout. It’s not work. It’s play.

We evolved being active, and so, we were designed to run. But also in our genes is the tendency to take advantage of plentiful times and store energy for the lean ones; to be lazy. Knowing there are both sides in us, the key is to tap into the natural joy of movement innate in humans. It’s in there, somewhere. We don’t even have to look back to our hunter gatherer days to find when humans liked to move. Remember when gym was your favorite subject?  Remember when sitting still in time-out was a punishment? Remember recess?--The open field that just called you to run until your lungs burst. The games and competition, friends, kissing tag (where were the recess monitors in the eighties anyway?) It was a time of freedom and exploration, a time to be social, to take a break from responsibilities. That is what your exercise time can be. Your recreation time.

The good news is that any energy expenditure above that of resting level counts as exercise. This means anything besides sitting still, so surely everyone can find something enjoyable in that category. Doing something you like not only makes the experience more pleasant, it makes the exercise you are doing seem easier. In a laboratory study on relatively inactive adults (Parfitt & Gledhill 2004), participants indicated their preferred exercise among three similarly difficult aerobic workouts and then performed each of them for 20 minutes. After exercising with their preferred method, their psychological distress, reported difficulty, and fatigue were lower, and their sense of positive well-being was higher, even though the actual difficulty of the three choices were roughly the same. The exercise the individual chose was actually easier to do and gave them greater mood benefits. 

If you’ve suffered through your workouts in the past only to quit when your willpower gave out, you might benefit by experimenting with something new until you find what keeps you coming back. Look for activities that fit your personality. Competition may be the catalyst that gets you moving (basketball? racquetball?, maybe a sprint triathlon?). If you are socially driven, it might be a group class complete with social interaction and support. Don't underestimate the value of social support and accountability; if you've recruited a friend who's planning to meet you at 6:00am, you're much less likely to hit the snooze button. Others prefer time for themselves with a headset and a fitness watch to track improvements. Be open to trying something new. You may be surprised at what you find out you like. If the treadmill in the basement didn’t do it for you the last few times you committed to get in shape, it likely won’t be any different this time around. Make a change. Find what you love and you’ll forget that it’s work.

• Combine Your Motivations: At any given moment you have a mound of competing motivations jostling for top position. You have a motivation to write that email, get to work on time and earn that paycheck, eat the donut sitting on the counter, watch the next episode of Walking Dead, and, oh yeah, get fit. You can help manipulate what ends up on top by leveraging a stronger motivation in order to get a weaker motivation met. One of us (Andrea) loves her treadmill in the winter. (Full disclosure; I actually just love the Netflix shows I watch while on my treadmill in the winter. By combining the motivation to watch Netflix with the motivation to exercise, the stronger supports the weaker.) Another of us (Jared), used to rarely go to the gym, but it’s been a regular habit now for over a decade because cousin Landon (a personal trainer) would get on his case if he missed (now it serves both social and fitness purposes). Kristen got a job teaching swimming lessons combining her motivation for mula with her motivation to workout.  Matt loves to listen to podcasts, so he downloads them and listens while he walks. Andrea decided to save money and not hire the snow plow company to plow the driveway, instead shoveling it herself. The motivation to be able to get out of her driveway supported her motivation to sweat a little. Win win. Volunteer to coach your child’s soccer team. Do your own gardening. Schedule a standing time to walk with a friend each week and leverage your social motivations. Take a lunchtime exercise break for some fresh air and sun on your face. 

• Consistency (Let the Habit Loop do the Heavy Lifting): It sounds counterintuitive, but an exercise habit is actually easier to stick with if done every day compared to a few times a week.  According to a study by Rodgers and colleagues (2002), the more frequent the prescribed exercise, the better the adherence. Think of it this way: Every night you brush your teeth before you go to bed.  You don’t have a M-W-F teeth cleaning schedule, so you don’t have to think, “Is it Monday, brush day?” You just walk into the bathroom before bed each night and get it done. It feels wrong if you don’t. With exercise, if you consistently wake up, roll out of bed, put on your workout clothes and go walking, it significantly reduces the cognitive effort of remembering what day it is, deciding when you’ll be able to fit it in, and then convincing yourself to do it. With exercise, the less thinking involved the better. To the brain, decisions and willpower are dipped from the same bucket, and there’s only so much of it. Help yourself out even more by scheduling your workout at the same time every day. The subconscious takes over when cues like time of day, place and circumstances are the same. The brain eventually gives up resisting and the act becomes automatic.  Sure, take a day or two off here or there, but when exercise is in the same category as eating, sleeping, and brushing your teeth, you’ll know you have arrived.

In his book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg describes the habit loop as cue, routine, reward. When applied to exercise, the cue is what reminds the brain that it’s time to exercise; seeing your workout shoes by the door, rolling out of bed each morning, or coming home from work each day. The routine is your actual workout. Then there is the reward, and here’s why exercise can be a difficult habit to create. When we think of the rewards of exercise, most often we think of those that materialize in the long term: gradual better health, preventing disease down the road, looking and feeling better and more confident. However, in order for a habit to be created and become self propelled, there must be an immediate reward that reinforces the routine. The immediate rewards of exercise are more subtle and you might miss them if you aren’t looking. Try paying attention during and after your workout to what is happening to your mood, your stress levels, how you feel about yourself and the world around you. A conscious scan of your mind and body will discover those real but subtle feelings of relaxation and accomplishment. But in order for those feelings to be there we need to go back to the process, the actual workout, and make sure it is at a level so that the physical sensations of breathing harder feel cleansing instead of scorching to your lungs, and the warmth in your muscles feel powerful instead of defeating. You have to work in that sweet spot appropriate to your fitness level that creates a sense of success and accomplishment. You can also try affixing your own immediate rewards to exercise, like treating yourself to your favorite healthy smoothy afterward. It is essential that there is a clear recognition of the reward because a habit is only formed when the brain starts expecting the reward--craving the relaxation and sense of accomplishment. (Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit, 2012, pg 51) Eventually, with consistency, the habit loop will form, and you’ll be exercising on autopilot instead of willpower. Read more about how to make habits work for you in this module.