How to enjoy your workout

How to Enjoy Your Workout:

Deep down inside, many of us (including me, of course) love to relax, eat, and have a lazy lifestyle. If you want to motivate yourself from here, it’s a lot more challenging than you think. I can share what I've learned for myself. I will also share what I've heard from other sources that did not work for me. Here I will try to share all of them in a snack-style format (lol) so you may check and know what is best for you.

Set a Goal:

You need to set weekly and monthly goals for exercise. If you think that you should do 1 hour of exercise for 3 days and at this moment you are not doing any exercise (actually from where I started my journey), you cannot do it. Start small, maybe 20 minutes or 30 minutes, then gradually increase to 1 hour, maybe after a month. If you overstress yourself, you will quit within 2 months for sure.

Make a Routine:

Choose the best and most comfortable time for your exercise. If you are a late riser and always need to rush for the office (like me), do not consider the morning time for your exercise. The evening is also a good time. For some weeks, workload was higher and I needed to work late. Then I considered some lighter exercise before going to sleep. Trust me, there is always time for exercise, we need to prioritize only.

Correlate with Passion or Other Targets:

If you have some passion that can be correlated with exercise, that’s also good for you. If you live in a crowded city and want to avoid traffic, you may consider walking, running, or cycling as exercise and also reaching work from home or to home from work.

Monitor Progress and Treat Yourself:

This may sound crazy, but it's true. I like our country-style milk tea with a lot of sugar. When I started to burn fat and doing exercise for it, I set a weekly fat burn target. I was checking my weight every other day in the morning before having anything. My target was always 1 lb/week. If I could achieve it, I celebrated with that special tea. Some weeks I failed, so I restricted myself from having it. Some weeks, I achieved it before the week finished, then I celebrated early. I didn't wait until the weekend.

Workout Together:

Keeping motivation alone is difficult if we are considering long-term exercise. I am no exception to this. For the first 6 months, I found a workout friend, so we did exercise together. After I moved from that area, it was difficult to find an exercise buddy. Luckily, I had Bluetooth headphones, so I could talk over the phone with some of my friends and listen to music so I didn't feel alone.

Find a Cheat Day:

I heard from many people to keep a cheat day from exercise. Well, I don’t like this concept and did not work with me. Exercise is like your spouse, and you should not cheat (lol). Instead, I kept all my exercises enjoyable and lighter than I carry so it becomes a fun time and not a burden.