Drop And Give Me 30 – Day 2 – Make Exercise A Habit
Posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Is exercise a habit of body or a habit of mind?
It’s only Day 2 of my fitness challenge and already I’m asking you to make exercise a habit.
Now, you’re wondering – isn’t a habit something that only occurs after, say, 21 days? Isn’t that the accepted time it takes to make something a habit? 21 days?
Not if you ask Aileen Bennett of ThatSpeaker.com. She has an interesting way of illustrating how we make something we do, good or bad, a habit.
Paraphrasing here, I present Aileen’s theory on making something a habit:
Consider the first cigarette you ever smoked. (If you were a smoker I can already see the lights starting to go on.) Did it take you 21 days to make that a habit? After you lit up your first cigarette, did you say to yourself “Okay, I’d better keep this up for 21 days so I make it a habit?” No.
I suspect, like all good first-time smokers you just lit up another one right away, and then another, and then another… because, dang, that was fun!
You committed yourself to smoking from Day 1! You didn’t say, “I’ll give it my all for 21 days, but if it’s not a habit by then, I’ll just quit.” You were IN from the very beginning. This smoking stuff was going to change your life! It was going to be cool, make you look older, and fit in with all the other cool kids. So, yeah, light me up!
From that very first puff, if you were committed to smoke, then doggone it, you were going to smoke! It wasn’t going to take any 21 days to convince you that this was a habit worth forming.
Okay, Aileen, you are definitely on to something here. Thanks for the insight.
When you decide on an exercise program, buy your free weights, floor ball, bike, shoes, or whatever you need to begin, you are already committed to making exercise a habit.
You can “light up” every day, knowing that you have already gotten in the habit of exercising, or you can wait and see how you feel after 21 days to decide.
My commitment is to exercise every day for the month of March so that I can keep track of my progress. I already know I’m “hooked” because I know how good it feels to get fit, and how bad it feels to get off track.
Make exercise a habit in your life. Make it your resolution to get fit after 50 like your life depends on it – because it does. Getting fit and healthy should not only be a priority, it should be a habit!
Good luck and I’ll check in again soon!
p.s. Don’t forget to keep track of your progress. Many doctor’s offices allow their regular patients to come in and step on the scale and even have their blood pressure taken. Be sure to take advantage of these services if you can. You’ll also want to take your measurements in the next few days, if you haven’t already. We’ll get into more of this later.
p.p.s. If you are still looking for a great, quick, at home fitness program, click here to see what the FatLossQuickie program is all about. This is what I’m doing for my home exercise program because I’ve done it before and it works!
Besides being quick and fun, you get lots of extra goodies when you purchase the FatLossQuickie program.
Take a look and see what you think.
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