How do you stick with your routine? how do you keep yourself from quitting?
For me it's simple, but it involves a lot of variables. Here we go:
1. I am an indoor cat. I am not a natural athlete. I do not enjoy exercising. I do it because I have to in order to feel good & be healthy. I would say I do it to look like Ryan Reynolds or Hugh Jackman, but I look like Bill Gates, so I have to be content with being nerdy but also being fit & feeling good, haha.
2. I have the most energy in the morning, so I exercise in the morning. It is way more of an internal fight if I do it after work. So I stack the odds in my favor by doing it before the day gets busy & doing it when I have the most energy available to burn off. That is what works for me. Also, if I exercise at night, it pumps me up & then I have a hard time sleeping.
3. I follow a plan. I have a printed calendar on the wall that I check off with a red sharpie every day. I treat my exercise time as an appointment that I have to go to, like a dentist's appointment. It's not optional; it is a commitment. I keep myself honest by tracking my progress every day using that visible calendar that I have to physically check off when I'm done. It's simple, yet very effective. A variety of things led me to this method. One good post on reddit was "no more zero days"...i.e., if you don't make progress every day, or at least do SOMETHING every day, even if it's not your ideal workout, then you have a zero day, and 0+0+0=0, so set things up so you don't have any more zero days:
https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_just_dont_care_about_myself/cdah4af/
Another method is Jerry Seinfeld's "don't break the chain" method:
https://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret
Apparently
Seinfeld didn't really create or even say it, but I like the idea: out of sight = out of mind. Creating a visible reminder (by using a calendar on the wall) and having to do a physical action (marking a big fat red X on each day) and creating a chain (which has some fun psychological effects, like not wanting to break the chain) is a great way to keep your workout program visible in your life, instead of squirreled away on a piece of paper or in an app somewhere. I mean, there are plenty of people who can just "do" their workout & stick with it mentally, but I am not one of them. I get too distracted, so I need something to keep me honest & keep me in the game.
4. I do not believe in motivation or willpower as effective long-term methods for sticking with an exercise routine. Motivation disappears the moment you don't feel good, and willpower requires resolve in the moment, which is subject to being fickle. Instead, I believe in habit. We are habitual creatures. Pick a time, pick a routine, get into the habit of doing it. However, habit is downstream from decisions. Not that I don't believe in habit, but habit is something that develops from something else. But first, I don't really believe in discipline, either. I think discipline is stupid. Traditionally, discipline means having the willpower to just push through things, which goes back to that "just trying really hard every day" thing. I am a human being and I am pretty freaking lazy; when I am discussing stuff like working out, I get all excited, but the next day, that fizzles and I don't want to use discipline anymore lol. Sure, I'll get motivated to do some pushups if the "300" is on TV, but other than that, give me pizza & Netflix! Instead, I believe in making decisions to design a system to ensure your success. This goes along with the habit stuff above. You have to clearly define what you want, how to get it, make a plan, make a daily appointment, put a reminder alarm on your cell phone, etc. It all boils down to knowing what you want & how to get it, and setting up your environment to enable you to be successful.
5. I went through a lot of eating styles over the last decade. I am currently enjoying IIFYM. I don't follow it 100% of the time, but I am definitely much more conscious of what & how I eat. I like the idea of the 80/20 rule - 80% of your body is made in the kitchen, 20% is in the gym. IIFYM says you don't need cheat meals or cheat days, you just need to eat food that fits your macros, and I have found that to be accurate in terms of getting results.
6. I currently like to do 7 meals a day. 3 main meals, plus a morning snack, brunch snack, afternoon snack, and dessert. I also carry around water & ice with me to stay hydrated. I've found that doing small meals keeps me from getting drowsy after a big meal & keeps my energy stable all day. I am hypoglycemic (low blood sugar), so that has a lot to do with it as well. I have a lunchbox from Isolator Fitness that can fit 6 tupperware-style containers inside with ice packs. I prep my food ahead of time most days so that I can simply open & eat or heat & eat. Meal prep enables me to be successful on my food goals because it's just a matter of what's eating in my bag instead of having to figure out lunch every single day.
7. I've been through a lot of exercise methods over the years. I've seen a lot of people be very successful with IIFYM & lifting, with little or no cardio. I do 30 minutes of cardio a day because I have crap digestion (SIBO aka slow motility) & require cardio for my stomach to work well. I am also not a big fan of the gym & prefer to work out at home, and didn't want to have to have a spotter, so I switched to calisthenics. Bodyweight exercises are fun & easy to do and keep you in great shape. You can do it with virtually no equipment, although over the years I have purchased a few items, including one of those pull-up bars that hang on your door frame & a dip station (both were about $30 or $40 each off Amazon). If you are looking for training programs that you can track & grow with (vs. "just working out at the gym"), here are some good ones:
https://www.reddit.com/r/C25K/wiki/faq
http://armstrongpullupprogram.com
https://stronglifts.com/5x5/
8. Getting enough sleep for me is huge, just huge. I need at least 7 hours of sleep per night. I also do better with an early bedtime. When I consistently go to bed early & get at least 7 or 8 hours of sleep, I feel awesome. It's like a natural fountain of internal motivation & energy...I just feel good. It's the same feeling you got when you were a kid & would sleep in on Saturday morning & wake up ready & raring to go. And it's very difficult because we have so many distractions these days (Internet, TV, gaming, etc.) & for a lot of us, night time is our only real free time for personal activities that we use to unwind. I've been on late shift for the last couple of months, going to bed around 2am some nights, but try to get my 7-8 hours of sleep in, and I've been doing pretty good. Although nothing has been able to beat going to bed during my sleep window (~8:30pm) when I have my regular day-shift schedule. For me, at least, good sleep hygiene is an enormous component of not fighting myself too much to exercise.
So that all looks like a lot of stuff, but it all boils down to just keeping commitments. This is what my normal schedule looks like in terms of my iPhone alarms:
4:00am: wake up
4:15am: exercise (30m cardio, 15m calisthenics)
5:30am: morning snack
7:00am: breakfast
10:30am: brunch snack
12:00pm: lunch
2:30pm: afternoon snack
5:30pm: dinner & dessert
8:30pm: bedtime
For preparation & execution, I do the following every day:
1. Set alarms on my phone to remind me when to wake up, go to bed, exercise, and eat, so I don't forget.
2. Prepare my meals for the day ahead of time, so I have everything in my lunchbox. Phone alarm goes off, I eat my food like a Pavlovian dog (lol), boom, I am 100% successful at my meal plan.
3. Follow my exercise program for the day.
4. Go to bed when my alarm tells me to & wake up when my alarm tells me to.
It's not overly difficult, but it does require some definition & some setup. You have to think about what you want & research how to get there & create an environment that will make you successful, which leads to habits, which leads to results. For me, an early bedtime, cardio + calisthenics, and IIFYM work really well. I have my meals ready, I have a visible plan that I can check off every day for my workout, I get enough sleep so I don't drag through the day & drag through my workout, etc. I would much rather stay up late, mindlessly eat with no accountability, and never exercise because exercise is boring & hard, but that doesn't make me feel good & doesn't give me the results I want. On the flip side, setting things up this way makes it so that I don't have to think about things, I just have to do them according to plan, which is a lot easier to manage on an ongoing basis.