Fitness Motivation:
Do-able Tips To Get You Going

Lacking energy? These fitness motivation tips will have you out of your chair in no time!

1. Do What's Fun!
2. Bite-size Chunks
3. Try and Try Again
4. Beneficial Yo-Yo Dieting
5. Take Your Time
6. Learn!

Do What's Fun!

Every person is different. Some people need a program that they are required to do every day. Even those people need to change that program every few weeks or every few months to keep it interesting and thus keep their fitness motivation up.

Most people, though, cannot stick to programs.

This web site is all about educating you and giving you options. The options allow you to find exercise and diets that you enjoy or that will at least keep you interested. The education lets you know how to fit those exercises into the spare moments of you day in a way that will benefit you.

We have a vast list of individual exercises and entire regimens in our exercise section.

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Bite-Size Chunks

If you're the average American, you are not going to suddenly get off your duff and hit the road for a 20-minute jog. You are not going to drive 10 or 20 minutes to the nearest fitness center and pump iron for an hour.

And you're certainly not going to take up one of those 1950's calisthenic programs.

So what will you do?

Something small!

I'm a little odd, so for me those small fitness motivation ideas have been ...

• Peek down the hallway to make sure no one's there, close my office door, and pump out 15 pushups. (You may be able to do 30; or only 3.)
• Make sure none of my young warehouse workers are looking because they all think 8 pullups are barely any; then I do 3 or 4 half pullups on the awning bar outside our break room door. I've also done them under the pallet racks in the warehouse, pulling up just till the top of my head touched the bottom of the shelf. Those half pullups will eventually turn into full ones.
• Dash out the door for two slow laps around our warehouse (1/4 mile) or parking lot during a ten-minute break.
• Close the office door and transform into a (soft) UFC fighter, dancing, punching, and kicking like I'm some sort of Muay Thai expert. Two minutes of that will let you know you've done something.
• Isometrics in my chair and at my desk—amazingly simple and effective exercises.
• Isometrics in my car while I'm driving. I use the steering wheel. There's a couple real effective hip and glute exercises you can do. (Uh, those hip exercises don't involve the steering wheel.)
• All of the above at home in my room, but I add dancing to my favorite songs or jump roping.

You may not be as odd as me, so you may not want to do some of those. Shadow boxing is a great exercise, but maybe it's too embarrassing for you.

The point is, there are a lot of little things that you would do.

• You have no idea how good it would be for your knees, back, and hips if you did lunges during commercials.
• Even five minutes of walking after dinner will raise your metabolism, rather than it taking a dive while your body digests that lasagna. And think how much your wife will appreciate that brief, romantic walk!

This web site will be filled with exercises that you can do in 30 seconds or two minutes. Get in the habit of snatching those times, and your energy and fitness motivation will grow until you're longing to show yourself what you do across twenty minutes and more.

Or, stick to five-minute sessions for the rest of your life. They work. And I'll be showing you how to pick the ones that work your whole body out.

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Try and Try Again

A friend of mine once hung his head and told me, "I went back to smoking."

He then explained that some difficult things had happened, and he'd had a cigarette during the last break at work.

I asked him how many cigarettes he'd had. When he told me he had just one, I told him he was crazy. He hadn't gone back to smoking. He'd simply had a cigarette.

He never had another one.

You will lose motivation. You will miss a workout, a week of workouts, or even months or years.

Why should that stop you from starting again? You didn't quit. You took a sabbatical.

I take them all the time. I'm not Sylvester Stallone. No one pays me to flex my muscles. If something's heavy, my strong teenage boys love to haul it for me. And I neither need nor want to attract the girls, I'm happily married.

My fitness motivation occasionally lags. I may gain weight or slow down, but I never quit.

People tell me they marvel at my motivation. "I saw you running through town the other day," they say.

Sure they did. Maybe I needed to get from Burger King to WalMart. It's only a half mile, so if the weather isn't too hot, why not trot down there on foot?

That's all the more true if I'm in a fitness motivation slump. Taking time off from fitness is all the more reason I'm going to park further from the door of the store or walk or jog somewhere I need to go.

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What About Yo-Yo Dieting? Isn't That Bad?

We've all heard that yo-yo dieting—having our weight go up and down—is bad.

Not if the alternative is getting fat, out-of-shape, and having a heart attack!

Your weight went up, and your fitness went down? Is that good?

Start now. Get back into it!

Yo-yo dieting is not good, but it is better than not controlling your diet at all! Use the fitness motivation tips on this page and our advice on exercise and diet to stick with it.

Try and try again!

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Take Your Time

Here's an amazing fitness motivation tip for you. Think about it, and you'll wonder, "Good grief, why haven't I always done this?"

While I'm doing the bite-sized chunks I mentioned above, I begin to feed my subconscious ... and thus my will.

I begin to mention to friends and family that I want to get back in shape. I pat my belly and mention that it's grown over the last few months. I read every article on health (not weight loss, health) that comes across my path.

Then I make sure health information comes across my path.

Set a Google Alert for health tips. Subscribe to our site blog and follow Doug's blog and mine.

This works.

It's amazing; it really is. You feed your will with information. Keep at it as though you think you're the American Heart Association. Then one day you'll wake up, and you'll think, "I'm ready; I'm going to do this!"

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Learn!

This a great site to learn from. We'll show you hundreds of shortcuts and public but little-known health facts that will make exercise easy, fun, and probably even addicting for you.

But, unfortunately, you have to learn. There are easy ways to transform your physical health, your appearance, your flexibility, and your general ease of living. But if you don't learn those easy ways, you won't be able to adapt them to your own life, you won't put them into practice, and you won't have fitness motivation!

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