Scott Free Thinking

My life is ridiculous. Sometimes, I seriously question my own sanity, as I make a habit of my self growth. Since starting this blog in November, I have made a solid commitment to write in this blog every single day and work on new content all the time. After a few months of writing about nothing but personal finance, lucid dreaming, general aspects of psychology and perception, different philosophies, the Law of Attraction, and now - the first entry on personal fitness. But what is there to say? Well, first of all, I’m going to describe a bit of my background in the area of physical exercise. Prior to today, I’ve not done hardly anything(yeah, I’m bad, I know), and honestly, I mean nothing.

A great place to start, believe it or not, is exercise and workout videos. Yeah, I know some of them are lame, but try to find the best ones out there. Don’t pop in old tapes from the 1980’s - forget that idea. Today Kim and I did several sessions from a DVD called TotalMix - The Complete Total Body Workout System. This thing pretty much blew me away and surpassed my expectations. During my pre-teen years I spent a lot of time learning American Tae Kwan Doe from one of the best karate schools in my area, and we did nothing more than simple exercises most of the time. This DVD has the same thing, but these simple exercises it has you doing are wicked. After the first 15 minutes, I had trouble getting myself up off the floor because my abs were so tired. After another 10 minutes on the legs, I had trouble walking!

Before I move on past talking about this DVD, though, I do think it is greatly worth mentioning a few more things about it. Number one, I’m going to explain one element of it from a male and female perspective. Guys, if you think workout videos are dumb or useless, get this one - it is three gorgeous women guiding you through effective workouts that will create a great muscle tone. Ladies, if you have been looking for something that is not over the top, annoying, overblown, or just plain overly difficult, this is the perfect place to start a great new exercise routine, and it is taught from some great teachers in the physical fitness business. Secondly, I also want to point out that the reviews on this DVD are phenomenal - 4.5/5 stars on Amazon.

But you know, some people reading this may not even be ready to get into exercising at all. If that’s the case, just start walking. It may not sound like much, but think about this: for every 5 miles you walk, at 3.5MPH, you burn approximately 465 calories. If you eat 2,000 calories a day, you’ve burned all but 1535 of those calories. Over 7 days, walking 5 miles every single day, you can burn 3255 calories per week. For those of you who may not know what a calorie is, it is basically the simple unit of energy within your body that is burned from daily activity. A standard diet is nutritionally meant to be approximately 2,000 calories, or at least, 2,000 calories with all of the food groups is considered a healthy amount.

And if you get really used to walking, then start running. Tons of resources exist out there for runners, one particular website I used to go to when I first began running is Runner’s World, or RunnersWorld.com. Running is something that is often best done in intervals. If you’re running around your neighborhood block, try running a lap, walking two, repeat, or anything in between. Steve Pavlina, the popular personal development blogger, has also suggested that it is better to stick to building your interval sessions, “even if it’s run 1 walk 24.” I agree.

But perhaps the biggest factor in starting on your quick set path to better personal fitness is simply to make a commitment, hold yourself to that commitment, and don’t stop until that goal is completed. Make your personal exercise goals the goals you post up all over the place. Treat personal fitness just as you would any other area of your personal development. You might try following the philosophy of NOPS, formulated by Paul Scheele as I describe in Setting Goals and Achieving Goals With the Right Mindset. Just as you would do with any other goal, post that goal somewhere in writing where you will see it every single day, where it is constantly reminding you of your dedication to completing that goal.

Make promises to other people if you need to and hold yourself to those promises. If your goal is to lose 50 pounds over the course of the next 12 months, then tell everyone you know, “I’m going to lose 50 pounds in the next 12 months,” and repeatedly bring up the issue, talk about it, keep reinforcing this goal in as many ways as possible. When you make a promise to someone else, they usually will form an expectation with you. Believe me, when that expectation is staring you in the face every single day via writing it down, and people repeating it back to you, your guilt will start riding on your conscience when you’re no longer following what you know it will take to lose that weight or get that body that you’re planning to shape and form.

Exercise can be oddly deceiving in its ease. Some exercises look very easy and then once you’re actually doing them you find out how dramatically effective they really are. Another thing about exercise is that if you’re doing your daily exercise routine right, it is a simple process, and easy to do. But will you do it every day? Will you truly stick to your commitment? For some, it is a question of “motivation.” My outlook on “motivation” is sort of unique from other people in the sense that my motivation stems from the idea of unlimited potential. If you knew that you could eventually achieve the body of a sexy model just by following a particular exercise routine, wouldn’t you do that exercise routine, granted you had the time? What about your health? If you knew that you could easily add about 10 years onto your life by exercising every single day rather than not exercising and dying 10 years sooner, is there any more motivation you need?

The general process is simple and easy to do, hard to keep doing. Give yourself a chance to get setup on the right track. Exercise every single day for 30 days using a routine that is fun and short like the routine from the DVD I mentioned above, and don’t stop until that 30 day time period is over with. If you do that, you just might unintentionally form a conducive physical fitness self habit that will aid you in wanting to exercise every single day from that point forward. Give it a shot!