According to exercise guru Kathy Smith, there is a big difference between “I want to” and “I have to.” According to her, you are already setting yourself up for failure if you condition your mind that you have to lose weight or you have to exercise. Instead, see yourself many years from now playing around with grandchildren and busy with things you would like to keep active. She further explained that it is all about setting your mindset and to look at things in a different way. Like the reason why you are walking 20-minute everyday is not because you want to lose wait but rather you would like to lead an active and healthy lifestyle. So - the next time you park your car, make it a distance away to where you are going and then walk.
Exercise physiologist Wayne Westcott, Ph.D., and psychologist James Annesi, Ph.D., made studies of older women and found out that dimmed lights, background music, small talk, and pictures of places for vacations help them stick to their ritual exercises.
“If you do not identify the issues preventing you from reaching your goal, you won't be able to overcome them,' says Greg Helmster, CEO of myGoals.com, an on-line goal setting site. It is a common practice for people to focus on the positive side always but this time he suggest to list down all the negative reasons why you cannot do this, you cannot do that. Then beginning the first day of next year, start to focus in one of those reasons and find a solution to the problem until you run out of reasons and excuses. He sighted an example, say for Day 1, you do not have any shoes to use for exercise; so the goal for that day is to buy one. On Day 2, you cannot find a place to exercise; then the goal this day is to find a gym.
But do you know that right at your own living room you can have your daily exercise? Stop using your remote whenever you change channels of your TV. Get up and change them manually. Instead of using your lawnmower; Why don't you buy a traditional grass cutter and make gardening a hobby? Take a little walk to the church on Sunday and leave the car at the garage.
One experiment was conducted at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston revealed that changing the bad habits of a person at once all of the same time is more foreseeable and effective rather than taking that habit away one at a time. This was a result of a study conducted by David Hyman, M.D., chief of general internal medicine and his colleagues from the same college. They asked patients to reduce their salt intake, to quit smoking, and instead walk an extra 1,500 steps a day. The results were amazing; those who were asked to change all their bad habits at once scored far better.
