Don’t Love Exercise But Wish You Did Syndrome
January 16, 2009
Many people have a part of their brain that so wishes they wanted to exercise, but truthfully they don’t want to do it whatsoever. They wish they wanted to. They want to want to. They just don’t want to. And they are sometimes jealous of people who DO enjoy exercise.
Hear the good news, all of you that fall in the Don’tLoveItButWishIDid category of exercisers; My guess is that one in a hundred people actually LOVE the physical act of exercise. The rest who say they love exercise really are in love with how they feel after they exercise or how their body looks from exercise or the flood of well-being that arrives by the time you peel off your sneakers. But I think those Exercise Lovers who proclaim that it feels good, actually have located a switch in their head that turns off the procratinator/complainer switch. They instead turn on the “Oh, I feel edgy to get that feeling that I love after I sweat “ switch.
Let’s all just get this clear, your heart pounding in your chest is not the most cozy feeling your body will experience. So. I am not asking you “Don’tLoveItButWishIDid” People to change something impossible like your eye color or your political party or to solve quadratic equations. Just kindly consider DOING IT. Just Do It.
Acknowledge all the while that you are putting on your sweats that, as that as Dr Phil says, “You don’t have to like it, you just have to DO it.” And if that sentence doesn’t seem to aptly scroll across the mental banner in your mind, try this one: “NO CHOICE.” Tell yourself it is not an option to NOT do it.
I read with interest this week about Barack Obama’s commitment to daily hour plus workouts that he does six days a week. And he’s not just shooting hoops either. He has a vigorous challenging, well-rounded workout routine. Folks, if the president of the United States can find time to exercise- and his schedule has got to be busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest, then we all surely can demand the same for ourselves (although I know your BUSY).
These past few weeks at the gym, I have noticed with pride many women working out even though we’ve had snow delays and frigid weather that requires an extra ten minutes of windshield scraping just to get to the gym. It does not go unnoticed, either by me, nor your arteries.
I like to think of my exercise routine the way a mother thinks of getting up in the middle of the night with her crying baby-I just don’t care about the agony. Because it gets me back to being me. When I think back (far back) to getting my babies back to sleep in the middle of the night (and I had twins when my son was 22 months old so I remember it well-I was busy come to think about it), afterwards,I’d climb back in bed and think to myself, “Whew, that wasn’t easy but not doing it wasn’t an option. Now I can relax.”
I think I hear your muscles crying. Better go put them back to bed.
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