How To Make Exercise A Longterm Practice

My dieting site was born out of two interlinked experiences; a trip to the gym with a friend and lifestyle changes throughout the years as I focused on launching my fashion line.  A few years ago, a girlfriend said to me, on our way to the gym, that she had been working out consistently 4 or 5 times per week for 5 years. 

 

I thought about my fitness over the years which looked more like an extremely checkered practice schedule with a month here or there, alternated with months of extreme dieting or excessive eating.  She wore her commitment like a badge of honor.  It inspired me.  I wondered what it would feel like if I could say at the end of five years that I went to the gym consistently, 4 or 5 times a week, without breaking and without starting over.  And relatively important was physical beauty and what I would look like 5 years and beyond. 

 

I decided to commit and proceeded in setting a date, writing out my goals and automating daily reminders using google.  Do or die I would succeed.  Little did I know what I was setting up myself for.  It wasn’t the first, brutal month of “pressing through the pain of change” , it was the months of capricious changes wrought by my other commitment to launching my fashion design business 2007. 

 

However, I remained consistent, never needing to start over, never needing another diet fad, never feeling bloated, never agonizing about weight or going on weight loss drives.  Dieting faded away, and so did weight gain worries.  With commitment I experienced more freedom from the dieting world or attention to the physical appearance. 

 

The most important shift I made was viewing exercise as essential to health. This did not happen right away because it is hard to work out, while dealing with losses,  changes, depression and other lifestyle issues, but as I forced myself to honor this commitment, I began to need exercise to deal with losses, changes, depression or life’s problems.  I stopped, having pms weight gain, fat days, breakup food binge, job change weight gain etc.  A commitment starts one day at a time. 

 

You too can commit to making exercise apart of your life for the long term.  What would it feel like to never have to start a weight management plan you started ten times already?  That is the goal, not weight loss, not body building, not dieting, it is discipline through commitment.  Maybe those words are too big to make you care this long term solution:  think of it in smaller terms.  Each day, I will find the will power to continue the fitness goal I started and just for today, all that is required is that I do it!