At 28 birthday, I made a promise to get as fit/slim as possible, but more than this, to become a healthy person, this included:
- Fasting
- Healthy dieting
- Excessive
It wasn’t about doing it until I hit a certain weight; I wanted to be sure that I created habits that would stick with me and be part of my life. I tried going to the gym a couple of times; I liked it but always found an excuse to just stopped going, this time, I didn’t want this to happen (easier said than done), I decided to focus on the first two until three months later the issue started to become more and more frequent on my thoughts.
When a problem or idea becomes too recurrent in my thoughts, it’s time to do (plan) something.
So sat a decided thought about it and made a plan. I needed to make exercising accessible, cheap, and took too much time and effort. These requirements made it irresistible, hard to avoid, or find an excuse not to do it. So I google:
What’s the minimum amount of exercise to be healthy?
The answer is 150min per week or about 21min per day, so I decided to made 30min per day, every day – Yes, every day. Next: It needs to be easy and doesn’t require too much equipment or money.
Jumping. I bought a jumping rope and mode 30min of jumping for one month without skipping. I needed to become used to move every day, and there was no excuse to miss it doesn’t require too much from me to do it. I didn’t have to commute (I did from my living room), pay, or commit a lot of my time.
Run Rommel Run
I decided to do something more fun after around six weeks. Thirty minutes walk/jogging/running; it didn’t matter; what was important is that I was moving and it started to feel natural, after a few more weeks as soon as I wake I put my tennis on and go out to run.
It’s never going to be perfect
After two months or so, I start missing days, one here, two there; this is something that I learned to accept and is very important because feeling bad doesn’t help. We’re humans and “fail, So I put a few rules:
- Never miss more than 1-2 days
- Walking is also an exercise
And that’s it. I made exercise irresistible, so irresistible that now is part of me.
In resume, if you want to accomplish something, focus on the behavior and systems you need to build to make it real: instead of focusing on the weight or goal, I focused on creating a healthy life and building healthy habits.
Make it easy, irresistible, simple.