Originally posted by: Kaido
Originally posted by: GrantMeThePower
Hey guys. I used to be very active all the time.
I was a (modestly) excellent rock climber.
In college I surfed. I used to also do a lot of mountain biking.
A couple years ago i got into muay thai kickboxing. loved it, and got pretty decent.
then I got a girlfriend. Over a year and a half I stopped all exercise, gained 30 pounds, took to eating, drinking beer, and watching TV.
We broke up and she moved out and now, even though i feel like i want to go to the gym....i just dont want to. I feel lazy, tired, and just happy sitting there doing nothing.
I dont know how to motivate myself. Its not like I look in the mirror and think, damn kid, get in the gym, to the point where it actually motivates me. Nothing is able to get me to go.
How do you do it? After a full day of work, and taking care of the house, etc...how do you force yourself to go?
You need a whole series of things...motivation isn't 1-dimensional. Personally, I'm all about specifics. Try this - Ask yourself the following questions:
1. Do I have a goal?
2. Do I have a plan to achieve that goal?
3. Do I have a schedule for accomplishing my plan?
4. What am I supposed to do today to work towards my goal?
5. Do I know how I am going to motivate myself in the moment, when I don't feel like doing this?
6. Did I go to bed at a reasonable hour last night?
7. Did I eat a few decent meals yesterday and today? (what you ate the day before will affect how you feel today!!)
My guess is:
1. You have no goal
2. You have no plan
3. You have no schedule
4. You don't know what your workout for the day is
5. You have no motivational tools or tricks handy
6. You stayed up late
7. You didn't eat well
If that's true, then of COURSE you have no motivation! The first thing you need to do is figure out a strong reason "why" you want to get healthy. For me, that reason is energy. I'm a low-energy person, and if I don't take care of myself, I suffer from low energy and never feel like doing anything. When I exercise, eat right, and go to bed at a reasonable hour, I have all the energy I need throughout the day to get stuff done. Anyway, you can tell you have a strong reason why when it's a good enough reason that you'll stop drinking beer, watching TV, and sitting there doing nothing.
Your strong reason why is only half of a goal - the other half is setting specific things that you want to accomplish. You mentioned being 30 pounds overweight, does a goal of losing 30 pounds of fat sound appealing to you? Does the idea of a leaner, meaner version of you getting back into kickboxing sound appealing to you? Would you like to feel great about going to the gym to do that, and look forward to it again? If so, then that is your goal - lose 30 pounds and get into kickboxing again.
Next you need a plan to achieve that goal. The rule is 80% food, 20% workout. What are you going to eat, what exercises are you going to do (and when), and what time is a reasonable hour to go to bed? If you lose 2 pounds a week, how long will it take you to burn off 30 pounds of fat with consistent, daily kickboxing or other exercise, along with a better diet? You can turn that into a 15-week fat loss marathon. Oooh, suddenly you have motivation - now you have an exciting plan to burn the fat and get back into kickboxing!
So now you have a plan - spend 15 weeks losing 2 pounds a week by eating right and kickboxing. Next setup a schedule. A schedule is simply a list of stuff for you to do every day over a given period of time. So you want to lose 2 pounds a week, and in 15 weeks you'll meet your goal of losing 30 pounds. So to do that, you need to go to the gym and kickbox 5 days a week for 30 minutes a day. Not too hard, right? Go have fun for half an hour a day during the week.
Next, at what time are you going to do this? I've found that my energy is low after a long day of working, classes, errands, and housework. So, I go to bed early, wake up early, and exercise before I go to work. This way it's EASY in the morning, instead of HARD at night. I don't want to constantly have to fight myself to exercise every day after work, I'd rather just wake up a bit earlier and enjoy doing it, you know?
There's kind of an energy bell curve that happens throughout a day - high when you wake up, lower as the day progresses, and then of course that second wind at night that sucks you into staying up late. If you can get yourself in bed before getting sucked into that second wind and staying up all night, you'll have the energy you need to wake up and exercise in the morning, thus helping you achieve your goal on a daily basis.
Next, you need to decide on a specific workout - what are you going to DO for 30 minutes at the gym, 5 days a week? Figure that out, then you know what you have to look forward to each day, instead of wondering, "gee, I should exercise." You'll also need some motivation tools when you go to actually DO your workout - not every day is going to be a high-energy, high-motivation day for exercising. Get some pumping music, get some posters of Arnold, buy some new workout clothes to change into to make yourself FEEL like working out, do it all - do whatever it takes to help you get juiced up for your daily exercise task!
Also figure out what you're going to eat. Food = gives you energy. Early bedtime = gives you motivation. Good meal plan + good sleep plan = high energy & high motivation. Don't sucker yourself out of these two things if you really want to get to the gym. Going to bed early or at a reasonable hour is really hard, but choose a specific time and work on making that every night (I have an alarm set on my cell phone, because I usually get sucked into surfing the net at night and forget what time it is). If you don't eat healthy right now, then make sure you go shopping for a bunch of good food every week so that it's handy to make - tuna, chicken, lean steak, veggies, whole grain stuff like oatmeal and whole-wheat bread and pasta, and so on.
So there you go - if you want to do something, get *specific* about it. Tilt the odds in your favor for actually GOING to the gym by having a strong goal, having a plan to achieve that goal, knowing what your workout is for each day, eating well, going to bed at a reasonable hour (or early), and by having some motivational techniques available to get yourself pumped up to do it.
Or you can watch TV and ignore it