FEELING GREAT: Paint a bleak enough picture of life without doing exercise

Plenty of you reading this will be thinking of a New Year resolution or two.

Well, how about this for starters? This is a question from one of my patients/clients (aged 54) in the Paul Gough Physio Rooms.

He asked me this common question: “Paul, I often find myself starting, and then stopping, just about every exercise kick I’ve ever been on. The worst thing is that I don’t even realise I’ve stopped exercising (usually just going out for a nightly walk with my partner) until weeks later and then I find it difficult to get it going again. How do I find the motivation to keep active on a daily basis?”

Well do you need to make it your 2023 resolution to stick with exercise? You’ve got to know the reason why you’re exercising in the first place.

To find the motivation to keep healthy and active, ask what is it that you’re actually hoping to avoid by doing the exercise?

Is it to avoid always feeling stiff each day? To avoid infection, or lower the risk of heart and lung disease that are both more likely to happen to you if you don’t keep active or do some form of exercise?

Either way, you need to find something that motivates you enough to keep you from spending too much time on the couch or in bed.

Now, your reasons for wanting to exercise daily may be non-health-related, such as maintaining independence, self-determination or self-reliance, meaning you can still do things and go places for many more years to come.

And here’s the important thing to remember: whatever your reason for wanting to keep active, it has to motivate you - maybe even scare you!

Think what life would be like if you didn’t exercise by choice, as opposed to not exercising because you can’t – for example because of some debilitating knee joint problem or chronic lower back pain.

Whatever it is, paint a bleak enough picture of a life without exercise so that you don’t succumb to the temptation of spending day after day sitting on a couch and in front of the TV.

It has to motivate you enough to take action, however bad the weather is outside or however dark the nights are.

I hope you all have a memorable new year.