Exercising Motivation: How To Stay Motivated To Exercise By Focusing On On Consistency Over Intensity

If you’re struggling with your exercising motivation, the key is usually to focus on intensity over consistency. When it comes to weight loss one many people find it difficult to motivate themselves to exercise because most people associate a great deal of pain to getting exercise to lose weight. For most people, getting exercise brings up images of pounding the treadmill or “pumping iron” because most of us have been falsely conditioned to believe that in order to exercise for weight loss, you must force yourself to endure difficult high intensity workouts. This usually has a severely negative affect on your motivation to exercise. The truth however is that high intensity workouts are not necessary for weight loss, nor does exercising for weight loss have to be painful or difficult. In fact, you are far more liekly to stay motivated, lose weight and succeed in the long run by lowering the intensity of your workouts and making exercise as fun and enjoyable as possible.

The reason many of us believe that we must force ourselves to endure difficult high intensity workouts like hour long runs or marathon sessions in the gym is because many of us have been falsely conditioned by the “no pain, no gain” myth. The truth however is that ANY exercise you start to do – however small it may be – that is above what you are currently doing will increase your metabolism and cause you to lose weight. Anything that increases your heart rate above it’s normal rate by just a little bit counts as exercise. The key is to find ways of increasing the amount of regular exercise that you get that are FUN. You don’t have to pound the treadmill if you don’t like doing it, neither do you have to kill yourself every time you do a workout. Instead, find easy ways of increasing the amount of exercise you get on a daily basis that are fun and enjoyable. Going for a walk in the woods, playing soccer, joining a dance class – these are all things that increase your heart rate (i.e. exercise) and will cause you to lose weight. In order to stay motivated to exercise, look for FUN and enjoyable ways of exercising – don’t force yourself into painful high intensity workouts (UNLESS of course you really do enjoy exercising like that, but unless you’re a professional athlete most people don’t!).

In addition to finding fun and enjoyable ways of exercising, the second key to feeling motivated to exercise is to focus on consistency over intensity. Once you’ve found a fun form of exercise – playing soccer three times a week for example, focus on getting exercising in this way consistently over the long term. It’s not what we do in the short term that ultimately determines out results, it’s what we do consistently over the LONG TERM. Going for a 20 minute walk each day for a year will result long term success – where forcing yourself into going for an hour long run each day, and then giving up after a couple of weeks because it was too difficult won’t. Because we’ve been taught to believe in “no pain, no gain”, we tend to think that exercise has to be painful in order for it to be effective. The truth is that when it comes to weight loss you are far more likely to succeed and feel motivated if you find enjoyable ways of exercising, and then focus on long term consistency instead of on the intensity of the exercise you are getting.