3 Ways to Start an Exercise Routine (or any healthy habit) & Stick to It

A month into the New Year and you may be struggling with keeping up on your fitness goals. Don’t give up! I am here to help. The positive effect exercise has on our cognitive abilities and physical and emotional health are worth fighting for. You may feel over stressed or over scheduled and allow exercise to fall to the wayside or cut time spent at the gym, thinking this is a good solution. Before you know it, you’re no longer sustaining your exercise routine and therefore proving to yourself that you can not trust yourself – eek!

Neuroscience research suggests that it is times of high stress that we need to exercise the most, challenging the story that you’re “too busy” to make time for it.

Even a brief run will yield helpful returns on your ability to think on your feet, develop innovative solutions to complex problems and manage time wisely. In addition, exercise provides mood-boosting and mood stabilizing effects. Stress can leave us feeling irritable, on edge and jumpy, when we channel that energy into a run, spin or another form of exercise, we give the energy somewhere to go and return the body back to its homeostatic state.

So how can we implement and sustain exercise (Or any healthy habit, really)? Here are 3 ways for approaching this in a sustaining way.

1. Get honest with yourself and do not stop being honest with yourself. What is not working and why? Why do you fall out of routine? What is your story behind it? The most common reasons people fall out of routine is; 

• They lack motivation/self worth or self sabotage
• They start with too big of a goal
• They have no backup plan

Many times one of the above is disguised as “not enough time”. So sit down and get honest with yourself. 

1. Be forgiving and judgement free of what you discover. Look, we all struggle with something, so do not beat yourself up for why you are challenged by this. Drop any statement with the word “should” in it. When you choose the path of self development/discovery and set goals around exercise or health, it’s not easy. The most important trait to develop is tenacity.
2. Refine. When you realize what doesn’t work, put it away and try something else. The things my clients end up missing are 1 of 2 things; either a back-up plan (or several), or a smaller commitment to themselves; make expectations more realistic – bite sized.

Repeat these steps until you have your groove. Life will happen and you’ll need a reset somewhere along the line. That’s okay, pick up step 2 and move to step 3 to reset. The most important thing is your health and well-being, do not give up on those routines. 

“Everytime you commit to something and don’t follow through, you literally teach yourself not to trust yourself.” –  Vienna Pharaon