Hi guys! For the past… ever, I’ve been putting my health and fitness aside. I tried a few times to get into the habit of exercising to no avail. I’m not overweight or anything but neither am I strong or flexible as I want to be. Mainly because I don’t want to have health troubles later in life. HOWEVER, to get started I needed to google of course and… best 10 xyz, do this, don’t do this, you breathe wrong, you stand wrong, you do everything wrong, this is the only solution. All of these can be found about anything related to fitness. How does one get started with all this nonsense, misinformation and clickable? What’s even real anymore? Thank you in advance :)
Number 1 rule is consistency. Whatever workout routine and schedule you adopt, you must stick with it. No don’t skip it because you were tired. No don’t skip because you were hung-over, no dont’ skip because it’s a nice day, or a rainy day. Do it consistently, and commit for months.
Also, because you need to be consistent, it has to be sustainable. Has to be something you won’t hate to do. Biggest reason why people on diets fail.
That and fighting millions of years of evolutionary instinct screaming at you to eat everything you can when you start reducing calories in case you won’t eat again for a few days.
It’s only been MAYBE ~150 years that all classes of society had ready access to food.
I guess that’s an exta benefit of having to raise protein intake on a calorie deficit. High quality protein is very satiating.
Also helps that if you’re eating protein from a whole foods perspective, an 8oz chicken breast is a lot of food for only ~380 calories. Same goes for all lean proteins and even the fatty kind. You can fit a whole lot more in for equal calories going at whole foods than eating a 1200 calorie muffin.
This may be obvious, but I want to add that you should skip if you are injured. Noting that being sore from a previous workout is not the same as an injury. Also, if you are significantly sleep deprived it may be worth skipping, since you won’t be adequately recovered and that could also lead to injury. You will miss more days if you make an injury worse than if you play it safe and take time to heal. A day or two missed won’t ruin all your progress. Just don’t make up excuses.
The rule I try (and lately - fail) to stick to is to just go to the gym. I don’t hold myself accountable to actually work out, just that I physically get into the gym.
Of course, once I’m there, I’d feel silly if I didn’t at least do a small workout. And once I do that, I’ll usually have the motivation to do more.
But I always tell myself that I’ve succeeded 100% even if all I do is exist within the gym that day.
Yup, I’ve walked into the gym dead tired after work telling myself I don’t wanna be here, I should go home. Then I hop on the bike for 10m get into it and it turns into 40m.
Over time the consistency just builds into momentum and habit.