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Find An Exercise That You Can Love
By Thomas | January 5, 2008
Losing weight isn’t just about dieting. Exercise is important too. To lose weight, you have to burn more calories than you put into your body everyday. You can limit the amount of calories that go into your body by dieting. To increase the amount of calories you burn however, you have to get moving!
Some people just don’t like to exercise. I don’t have anything against exercise myself, but there are some forms of it that I don’t enjoy doing at all. I’m not a treadmill person. I get really bored if my scenery doesn’t change when I’m running. I’m not into swimming, jump rope or squat thrusts either. If I were to base my exercise regimen completely on squat thrusts and treadmills, I’d basically be giving the 2008 Weight Loss Challenge to Kenny. I wouldn’t be able to keep it up because I wouldn’t be enjoying myself.
You have to find an exercise that you like. I like the be outdoors, in the forest with the bears. Luckily, my little town has some mountains to the south behind the elementary school.
I love to climb mountains. And since it’s all uphill, it’s an incredible cardio workout. My heart rate gets up much higher than it does when I jog. More importantly, when I am in the mountains, it’s easy for me to “lose the time”. Every trip to the mountain I get to explore new trails. This exploration takes my mind off of the physical discomfort that my body is feeling.
I can do a 2-hour hike up in the mountains and feel great the whole time. On the other hand, it only takes about 20 minutes of jogging before I get restless and want to stop. The only trick here is that I found something I loved and turned it into an exercise, which is much easier than doing it the other way around.
Find an exercise you can love. Make a list of your passions and interests and see if you can find a way to turn one of them into a physical workout. If you can do that, then you’ll magically find that you love to exercise.
I’ve been hiking in the mountains for seven of the past seven days. I feel great and I actually look forward to exercising everyday. My fat brother Kenny doesn’t stand a chance. If you want to watch me destroy him and win the 2008 Weight Loss Challenge Championship, feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed.
Topics: Weight Loss Challenge 2008 |
January 5th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I wish I had a nice big hill to climb to run up around here. I actually don’t mind the routine types of exercises that involve treadmills and the like, but there is always a desire to mix it up. If there were even a short little hill to run up like Walter Payton used to train, I would love it. BTW be careful in the mountains, I’ve heard about those Japanese hillbillies and how they love to rape guys like you. I wonder how many calories that would burn?
January 5th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Excellent advice. I think almost anyone should be able to find an exercise they like, even the most hard-core couch potatoes. It might take a while, but non-exercisers just need to get out there and try different things until they hit on something they enjoy.
January 5th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Tried leaving a comment on another post, but got an SQL database error. Trying here.
January 5th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
I am afraid of hills, those hills we ran back in football camp years ago have traumatized me.
January 6th, 2008 at 12:35 am
@Kenny: The mountain is a great workout, but I’m going to have to find something different on the weekdays once work starts up again. It will be too dark when I get home to hike up there and I don’t know if I want another two hours away from my family. I might have to turn my weekday workout into a neighborhood jog.
@kch: I struggled with exercise for a long time. When you don’t like the exercise you are doing, you just look for an excuse to not do it, or to quit early.
@Kathy: I don’t know what’s up with the SQL errors. For what it’s worth, all three of your comments came through for me to approve, so it appears to work. I’m going to have to have a friend look at it for me. Thanks for letting me know the problem (Kenny had it too). In the meantime, don’t let that stop you from posting comments. It might not look like it, but I’m getting them.
@Fat Man: Thanks for visiting! I really like your blog. I by no means run up the mountains. I just walk up them with big steps (lumber?). Even just walking, my heart rate gets quite high. Maybe one of these days I’ll work up to jogging up the hill, but I don’t see it in the near future
January 6th, 2008 at 3:44 am
Wow- the Greatness of www.Fatmanunleashed.com has graced us with his presence. Love your blog man! That weight chart you have is pretty cool (and headed in the right direction I might add.)