by REX

We all experience those periods where we just don’t feel like exercising. Admittedly, I have been fumbling through half efforts for the last couple of months. Nothing I do has felt right, left me feeling stale, uninspired, etc. I talked myself into buying a new pair of shoes since the others were worn out, ran four miles last night, and felt great!

Okay, so that works for me, but as I’ve noted in other postings about fitness personalities, that isn’t at all like how other folks approach fitness.

What if you are one of those folks who want to exercise, yet for some reason, just can’t get over the hurdle and make the consistent commitment? You’ve made commitments to other things. You are quite successful in life, yet you can’t seem to commit to exercise, and you wonder why. Well, if you are beating yourself up, telling yourself that you are “just lazy”, or “there must be something wrong with me”, then stop that destructive behavior. That negative attitude is just making it worse.

Really good, thought provoking article form Experience Life Magazine explores some of challenges people face when it comes to exercise. Highlights of the article are below. Please review the complete article here:

While a commitment to physical activity does require a certain amount of self-motivation, hardcore resistance to exercise is usually more than mere reluctance. Problematic belief systems, lifestyle patterns, depleting nutritional habits, low energy and a host of other unexpected causes can all contribute to an activity-averse profile.

Sound like you? Instead of beating yourself up, try acknowledging that you’re resistant to the idea of exercise (not lazy or incapable), then determine the source of the resistance so you can remove the real obstacles between you and your fitness goals. “The key is to meet yourself exactly where you are now,” says Bess Marcus, PhD, a clinical health psychologist and professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Brown Medical School in Providence, R.I., and author of Motivating People to Be Physically Active (Human Kinetics, 2009).

Exercise challenges fall into two categories: excuses and barriers.

Barriers are generally environmental or physical limitations that can be minimized or overcome with some strategic environmental or methodological adjustments. For example, having a broken leg and lacking access to a safe, convenient space to exercise would both qualify as barriers: They throw up certain obstacles to exercise, but don’t prevent you from taking action to work around them.

An excuse, however, is more of an internal barrier: a self-legitimized reason why you feel unable to make it out on that 10-minute walk. Excuse-based exercise resistance is often trickier to resolve than barrier-based resistance because it stems from something deeper inside us.

“Struggling with regular exercise is typically not about scheduling time or having access to exercise equipment,” says Greene. “The real obstacle is usually your thoughts and feelings.”

Common Obstacles:
Low Self-Esteem: “The less deserving you feel, the harder it is to justify taking care of yourself through exercise,” says Greene. A related challenge involves body image — the notion that you’re somehow not fit-looking enough to do the things that fit people do.

The “Fixed Mindset”: If you’re used to succeeding wildly in other, more cerebral realms (being a lawyer, playing the piano, cooking gourmet meals), you might be hesitant to try an activity at which you may not excel. When we don’t perform up to our expectations (which we usually won’t do the first time we play racquetball, for instance), the fixed mindset internalizes it: We don’t think, I failed at this; we think, I am a failure

Perfectionism: Closely related to the fixed mindset is the demon of perfectionism, and exercise is easy prey. We’ve been led to believe that all exercise means a good sweat on a cardiovascular machine, followed by some strength training, followed by stretching — and anything other than that routine just doesn’t measure up.

Martyrdom: Chronic self-sacrifice, a trap into which many parents fall, is another common obstacle to healthy activity. When the priority seems to be on everything except you — kids, spouse, job, housework, volunteering — taking time to be active can often seem beyond reach.

“When you take on the martyr role and meet everybody else’s needs but your own, you eventually feel unworthy of taking time for yourself,” says Greene. This may be less a matter of low self-esteem than a loss of clarity about the essential role your own well-being

How to Overcome?

The Key: Write It Down
Greene recommends setting long-term goals as the key first step to overcoming exercise resistance. Write down your goals and identify what you want from exercise. Maybe you need more energy to take care of your aging parents, you want to thwart the cardiovascular disease that plagues your family, or you’d like more stamina to be able to play with your kids.

Set more-specific activity objectives you can hit easily from your current fitness level: whether it’s four 10-minute walks a week, three strength-training sessions or five 5-mile runs.

The next step is to log activity — any amount — in your journal. Marcus coauthored a study, published recently in Preventative Medicine, in which researchers asked 163 sedentary people to log their exercise stats on the Web. “The more times people came to the Web site, the better they did maintaining their exercise habits and meeting their goals,” she says.

Sometimes, overcoming exercise resistance simply requires that you expand, or even redefine, the very idea of exercise. For starters, exercise doesn’t always have to be running or playing basketball or going to aerobics. If you’re after basic health benefits (vs. optimal fitness), it’s about being active for 30 minutes a day, most days of the week.

There’s also no rule that says you have to bang out one 30-minute (or more) session every day. If you’re really stuck, start by dividing daily activity into 10-minute segments, or complete half your goal in the morning and half at night. And integrate as much activity as you can into your daily life: Use the stairs instead of the elevator, get off the bus two stops early and use a push mower to cut your grass. Every little bit counts.