Design your life – Get fit!

A healthy body is a healthy mind.

When you are in good physical condition, you feel more powerful, more productive, more efficient and more alert. You’ll feel faster, bounce out of bed, have better sex and better skin.

Start today, start now. Go for a walk. A run. A jog. A swim. Just take the first step. Once you’re going, you’ll find it easier to keep going. A body in motion remains in motion, and a body at rest remains at…

You can physically feel the benefits of a good workout. When I get back from a hard bike ride that challenges my PB [personal best], I catch myself bouncing around the house or office and whistling all day – it actually bothers some people. That’s fine with me. Happiness is contagious. If you don’t like your environment, if it doesn’t serve you, change it!

Don’t wait for the perfect weather or perfect running shoes. Just get started. If you don’t like running, check out the 7 Minute Workout app. My wife and I used to do this three days per week, now I do Mack Newton’s 7 minute workout 6 days per week. There is no excuse for not finding 7 minutes in the morning for boosting your start to the day. No need for gyms, travel, parking or waiting for machines. If you want change badly enough, you will make it happen.

Set yourself up for success.

Start with an easy goal. Don’t take yourself out by setting a hard-to-achieve goal such as going to the gym for an hour every day, especially if you currently don’t go at all. Commit to 15 minutes of power walking 3 days per week. The feeling of achieving that is better than beating yourself up for not making it to the gym every day.

Quality is better than quantity. 

In a recent study conducted at the University of Virginia*, exercise physiologist Glenn Gaesser, PhD, asked participants to complete 15 x 10-minute exercise routines per week. After only three weeks, the volunteers’ aerobic fitness was equal to that of people 10-15 years younger than them. Their endurance, flexibility and strength were equal to those of people up to 20 years younger. Gaesser said, “It would be useful for people to get out of the all or nothing mindset that unless they exercise for longer than 30 minutes, they’re wasting their time.”

So, the question you have to ask yourself, “Punk!”, is how badly do you want change?^

*Thanks Paul Blackburn for the heads-up

^Yes, a bad Clint Eastwood reference. Just being authentically me.

Photo by Autumn Goodman on Unsplash