No one can tell you what the most fun way to exercise is for YOU. However, I can tell you what factors can make exercise more fun for ANYONE. It is common and normal to fear the gym, detest running, or resent having to move your body in the evening, on the weekends, or on vacation when you think to yourself – “but I just worked all day. Why can’t I just relax?”
Without preaching to you about the benefits of having an active lifestyle – because if you’re reading this, I’m assuming you’re already on the path to wanting that for yourself – I’d like to give you some tips for when you’re first starting out.
What’s the most fun way to exercise?
Making Exercise Fun by Making it Easier
My boyfriend’s education in fitness exceeds a master’s in exercise science and kinesiology. The following tips are my own “layman’s terms” interpretation of his knowledge that I preach, second-hand, to my friends and family.
My loved ones have said that these are the tips that have helped them Stop being Sedentary and Begun to be Active.
I am not claiming that these tips will change your life altogether, but rather, making these daily behavioral changes are the first steps to developing a lifestyle that focuses on your body’s wellbeing in a way that works best for you.
Hydration: Our Bodies are Mostly Water
First and foremost: you do not drink enough water. This statement rings true for most people. If you believe you drink enough water, you’re probably mistaken. But let us for a moment imagine that you do, indeed, drink enough water: pretend you don’t, and drink some more.
I (and my partner) have had so many people respond to this with, “but what if I drink too much water?”
You can’t. Unless you are repeatedly drinking more than a liter per hour, which is over an entire nalgene bottle as pictured below, you can probably stand to drink some more water.
Consider also the fact that your bladder, much as your stomach, if purposefully flexible. It will adapt to accommodate your [water] drinking habits. Turning up your water intake will have you peeing more at first, but you’ll adjust.
Now I’m sure you’re wondering: “how much water should I drink?” There is no direct answer, but we ascribe to the half your body weight in ounces method. Me being approx. 150lbs, my goal is to drink an average of 75oz per day. The reality is that I probably drink between 100-120oz a day. I’m a thirsty gal.
If you’re following this thinking, I hope you’ve arrived at the final point: “how, then, do I track my water intake?” Don’t bother having charts and phone app trackers – although if that sounds enjoyable to you, yaknow, do what ya want. Just get yourself a big water bottle and do approximate math, so that you can tell yourself you need to drink two, three, or four whole bottles rather than counting if you’ve drunk four or six or seven 8oz cups out of your necessary ten for the day.
If you’re going to chug at any point, do so as soon as you wake up. Don’t try to make up for it before bed, you’ll break up your sleep by pissing every hour throughout the night. Which brings me to the next tip.
Nighttime Routine
If I’m not getting the recommended eight hours of sleep a night – and I’m a fantastic sleeper, mind you – then I doubt you are also. Can you guess why?
Besides the reasons that the average person experiences, such as: not deactivating your nervous systems through rigorous activity; hyper activating your psyche with excess screen stimuli; consuming too much processed or fatty or oily or otherwise “unhealthy”* food; drinking too much fluids of any kind but especially sugary and diuretic ones… There is another, simpler reason that is easier to tackle before you make any of those other changes, and that is your nighttime routine.
*Unhealthy vs. healthy is not a real distinguisher for food, but we can address that elsewhere. Just know that I’m using the word “unhealthy” as a descriptor, rather than a label.
Whatever your bedtime may be, 9pm or midnight, how much time do you allocate for your routine prior to? Do you have a daily checklist? Let’s start with that.
Let’s pretend you’ve got a shit show of a life for a second. Your room’s a mess, you have more pets than you can manage, and you opt to spend your evenings in front of the TV instead of cleaning up or making dinner – you ate hibachi take out for the third time this week because it’s conveniently on your commute home from work. Even if this is your life, you have control over how you go to bed.
Make your “must-have’s” checklist:
- Take shower, or at least change into PJs
- Brush teeth
- Plug up phone to phone charger
- Arrange blankets and pillows
- Close curtains
- Lock doors and windows
- Turn off lights
Wow! Even though each of these tasks take only a few minutes at most, just these seven will take you more than twenty minutes. So if you tell yourself you’ll get to bed by midnight, maybe you should start saving your Skyrim game and shutting off your console around 11:30 to give yourself time. Imagine if you did that every day – you’d be getting an extra two and a half hours of sleep every work week by getting to bed on time.
Never Enough Fruits and Veggies
Who cares if you put ranch on your salad? It’s better to eat broccoli with cheese dip than not eat broccoli at all.
We don’t believe in restrictive diet practices in this household. Eat bread, potatoes, and doughnuts if you want to. Don’t focus so much on “Oh, I can’t eat this,” or “That’s too many calories,” or “I’ve already had two meals with pasta today.” Focus more on eating more vegetables and fruits. If you want to eat less of other things, simply start your meal with the vegetables – and then eat more of that.
When it comes to fruits, it is better to eat them earlier in the day than in the afternoon or evening. The sugar will give you energy and subsequently be burned by your activity in the day. When you crave sweets – not just oreos and ice cream but even granola bars and trail mix – try eating a fruit first. It is possible that your sugar craving will subside and you’ll no longer want that peanut butter bar. And if you still do, try eating just half of it first. What’s the rush, anyway?
Eat vegetables of as many kinds as possible. It’s easy to toss onions, mushrooms, peppers, broccoli, etc. into a big pan or pot with some butter. Believe it or not, butter is fine, and probably better than oil. Plus, it makes your vegetables delicious.
When you think you’ve had “enough” veggies or fruits in your diet, look at what you consume in a day and ask yourself if it can be replaced with or complemented by more veggies and fruits. Oatmeal in the morning? Replace with berries and nuts. Cake and icing for dessert? Replace with cantaloupe or apples with honey. Potato chips for a snack? Try carrots – and yes, use ranch for dipping if that’s what it takes!
Let Go of Fear and Explore
The possibly most important, most difficult piece of advice is: just go for it. Next time you’re at the grocery store, buy a vegetable you don’t normally buy. If it goes bad because you were too scared to try and cook it, or hated the idea, that’s alright! You tried.
This applies even more so to actual exercise. I’ve had so many conversations, especially with women, about activities like disc golf, hiking, bike riding in which they claim they could never or would never do anything like that. My younger brother told me going to the gym seemed terrifying.
Well, here’s a story: I used to drive to the gym, and get so anxious about who would be there, how people would view me, not knowing how to use the machines, wondering if people were snickering at me having to look up workouts on my phone… that I’d have a panic attack. In my car. Sob my eyes out. To the point where I’d fall asleep, exhausted by my own emotions, right there in the parking lot. I’d wake up thirty minutes, an hour later, and drive home. This happened a good five times before I finally made it to inside the gym.
One of the first big group beach trips I went on, most of the people there worked in the athletic field. Everyone wanted to play ball games – giant beer pong with buckets and tennis balls, spike ball on that bouncy net, and a full-blown volleyball net were some options. Pete (my boyfriend) can attest: I was so freaked out! All I thought about was how uncoordinated I would be, whether or not my fat rolls would be more noticeable when I’m bending over to hit a ball, or if my tits would be too bouncy for the games. All I can say now that I’ve gotten past these fears is: who f*cking cares?
I had a blast. And nowadays, I have a blast at the gym, too. It’s like an adult playground. The first months going to the gym was an ordeal. I’d walk in, spend way too much time in the bathroom or locker room “getting ready,” and always start on a mat doing abs or stretching – anything to make me look like I knew what I was doing. I’d pick up the lightest dumbbells and do the most obvious motions. I’d pick the corner bench rather than the middle bench. If the corner bench was unavailable, I’d wait.
I used to say I’d never play group sports, or go trail running. My first time truly trail running was a week ago, and I’ve gone on week-long backpacking trips in 10,000+ feet mountains. I’m still new to being more in touch with my body than I am afraid of getting hurt or looking stupid. I’ve still got a ways to go before I can say I’m comfortable with all kinds of exercise.
But there are people out there who can run ten miles a day and are terrified to jump on a trampoline. There are bodybuilders who are so uncoordinated, get hit in the face with the ball thrown at them. No one is perfect and no one has every bodily skillset possible. Just give it (whatever it is) a shot!
Learn and Practice Good Form
My final piece of advice is one you may need help with from others. Whatever you choose to try, be it running or weight lifting or skiing or surfing or playing tennis, you need to learn what it means to do it with proper bodily form.
Some basic cues you should regularly remind yourself of as you move your body (even in your day-to-day) include:
- Keep your abs tight! Don’t strain them and give yourself a hernia, don’t suck them in and inflate your ribcage. Imagine a string pulling you upwards from the crown of your head, lengthening your spine, and then hold it there. Flat back, tight abs.
- Activate your glutes! Whether you’re lifting a heavy object at work, getting up from a chair, or running along a field, don’t let your knees or your back take the weight. Drive your weight through your heels. Your glutes are big for a reason. They bear the weight of your body. In order to activate them, you may need to pop dat ass out.
- Shoulders back! Don’t hunch. Yes, this is about posture, but it’s more than that. Open up your diaphragm. Pull your shoulder blades towards each other. Widen your shoulder width and pump your chest out. Exaggerate these movements if you need to identify your personal range. Now, relax. Take deep breaths.
This, proper form, is something that not all personal trainers have an eye for identifying. I am lucky that my partner knows the body so well that he can cue anyone to improve their form. If learning more about this interests you, let me know, and perhaps I can finally convince him to start posting on social media!
And now, without editing this in the slightest, I am going to publish – thanks for reading!
absgeller 
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