The secret to getting in great shape is simple - eat in moderation and exercise regularly. No matter where you are today, those two things will get you to where you want to go. But man, it’s hard. Burnout, fatigue, boredom, injury, the comfort of our bed at 4 o’clock in the morning… they all conspire to derail us.
Our natural state is laziness. More specifically, energy conservation. For our ancestors (including those from as recent as two or three generations ago), staying in shape was pretty easy. From our hunter-gatherer distant relatives to our more recent pre-WWII relatives, just surviving required a lot of movement and a halfway decent diet. Thanks to a lack of technology, life required a significant amount of energy expenditure AND we didn’t have an abundance of cheap, palatable, high-calorie manufactured food.
For us today, this propensity for energy conservation means most of require some form of motivation-boost. In the post on food cravings, I discussed the nature of willpower. The trick to developing “willpower” isn’t continually winning the internal struggle between doing exercise (the fitness buff Angel on your shoulder) and skipping the workout (the chubby, lazy Devil on your shoulder.) Because on a long enough timeline, our genetics and biology guarantee the Devil will always win that battle.
The trick is to reframe the situation so you avoid that internal struggle using the future-self compassion hack I discussed in that food craving post.
This is an important first step.
Once we get over that first major hurdle, THEN we can start applying a host of smaller, less taxing “hacks” to stay motivated.
An Assortment of Hacks
I asked my Facebook friends what keeps them motivated to exercise, and they came up with a great list:
Hire a trainer to hold you accountable.
Keep the workouts simple and short so it’s harder to make excuses to skip them.
Gamifying the exercise to make it more enjoyable.
Do exercises you genuinely enjoy and look forward to doing.
Add different exercise routines for variety and novelty.
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable, first to deal with the discomfort of exercise and eventually to intrinsically enjoy the suffering.
Enter a profession that (should) require fitness.
Commit to a really hard event you’ll have to train to complete (like a race or competition.)
Change your daily habits so you move more, like parking farther away or taking the stairs.
Ponder your mortality to avoid death and disease.
Do “streaks”, like 120 days of running.
It’s a hell of a list. I actually have used or continue to use each and every one of these “hacks.” I’d add a few more to the list:
Make fitness social with training partners, exercise groups, etc.
Fitness makes it easier to do daily tasks, like lifting things.
Foster a desire to look good for my wife.
Foster a desire to protect others, including those I love and those I have a duty to protect.
Indulge in my curiosity to try new things vi experimentation.
Being generous with serendipitous rest days when I’m just not feeling it.
All of these ideas can be used in isolation or combined to keep us on a good path to avoid that inherent drive towards laziness. We can’t rely on always winning that Angel and Devil battle, but we can reframe how we use willpower, then implement these hacks. THAT will keep us on the path to fitness through regular exercise.
Got any other hacks you use? Share them in our Facebook Group!
~Jason
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