Any suggestions to get past this point where I feel like I'm just too tired to be active?
I could write a book on this.
I struggled with fatigue for most of my life. Turns out I have food allergies, acid reflux, hypoglycemia, and the horrible habits of eating junk food & staying up late. Once I overcame the first three, it was just a matter of changing my habits...which is extremely difficult to do :biggrin: So first of all, I totally understand your struggles with fatigue and the trap that you fall in of just not being able to pull yourself out of it - it's really hard!
One of the biggest things that helped me was structuring my environment. Basically you have to make it easier for you to do what you want, than not. Sort of like a see-saw...you have to tilt the odds in your favor, instead of against them.
For example, with food - most people keep junk food lying around, so it's really convenient to reach for a cookie. So then you hide the cookies and put out an apple. Well who wants to eat an apple, when you could eat a cookie? So instead, make a delicious snack ahead of time and leave that out, so that when you need to "cave", you go for something tasty yet healthy.
The biggest thing that causes fatigue is not getting enough sleep. That's pretty obvious, but not when you're tired...and there's a lot of factors involved. What time do you usually go to bed? How many hours of sleep do you get? Do you have a TV in your bedroom keeping you up? How long do you lay in bed before you actually fall asleep? Once you start to get an idea of how you are living now and what you want, then you can start to close the gap and figure out what needs to change...such as taking a TV out of the bedroom so that you're not tempted to watch it all night in bed. Stuff like that.
That whole "structured environment" thing is pretty powerful. Look at celebrities...they are no different or less lazy than anyone else, but they have better bodies than most because they pay people to handle their food, make them exercise, etc. They more or less create an environment where they are forced to do what they want, even when they don't feel like it. So yes, willpower & motivation is one aspect of exercising and eating healthy, but I think it's mostly about setting up your workspaces so that you get funneled into your goals more easily (unless you are naturally self-motivated, like a select few humans are ).
Some things that have helped me:
1. No TV/laptop in the bedroom - bed is for sleeping only, not entertainment. I do keep my smartphone next to the bed, but only for emergency nighttime calls and for my morning alarm - no playing on it in bed.
2. Make tasty meals ahead of time - I cook all my meals in the morning or the night before, so that I always have delicious (and healthy) food handy throughout the day in my giant lunchbox w/ icepacks.
Because I'm hypoglycemic, I need to eat protein every few hours or I get pretty tired. Those snacks mid-morning & mid-afternoon really curb the energy fade I usually get, and because they are available I don't have to hunt for them or go in search of junk food.
3. Putting a TV in front of my elliptical machine with Netflix - I get really bored doing cardio, but if I have a fun TV show to watch, then I actually look forward to it. You should pick a few shows ahead of time that you want to watch, and only watch them while you exercise, so that you always have something to look forward to - just like food.
Anyway, this post is getting too long :biggrin: The first thing you need to do is figure out what you want - what your goals are, specifically. It sounds like what you are really struggling with isn't a lack of motivation for exercise, it's a lack of energy from being tired. So tell us what your typical day is like in terms of what you eat and what time you go to bed & wake up.
Once you get over that energy speedbump of being tired all the time, physical activities like exercise actually become
fun. I struggled with food allergies most of my life until the last couple of years, which gave me asthma, fatigue, constant headaches, etc., and never understood why anyone did sports or went hiking or anything like that, because I always became exhausted quickly and felt like crap. Once I started getting enough sleep and eating healthy (but tasty!) foods, I felt so much better and really started enjoying physical activities like going out on my bicycle.