Buy Walking VideosUse A Trigger To Make Exercise A Habit
The biggest asset you can do for yourself is to make exercise a habit. One way to do this is to choose a trigger. Choose something that you do EVERY day without fail. Here are a few ideas:
- Waking up.
- Brushing your teeth.
- Eating breakfast.
- Going to lunch.
- Coming home from work.
- Eating dinner.
- Going to bed.
When I worked as a secretary, our office used to be right next to a gym in town. Instead of taking an hour to eat, I could run over to the gym and fit in a workout at lunchtime. Afterward, I just ate my lunch at my desk. Taking my lunch break was the PERFECT trigger for me because I was required by law to take a break, so I did it every day.
If you choose a trigger, then every time you do it, it will remind you to exercise as well. Another good trigger for me used to be waking up. When I was in college, I would run in the morning first thing after waking up. The first two weeks, I slept in my exercise clothes just to remind me to exercise. That worked for a long time and even now, I sometimes feel the urge to exercise when I first wake up. It was a trigger that still works even now.
What about you? Choose a trigger that you can correlate with your exercise and state it here in the comments. Now that you think about it, you might ALREADY have a trigger for your exercise, but you just haven’t noticed it yet. Tell me what you do to remember your exercise every day.
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January 28th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Trigger: the 3:15pm bell ringing at the high school where i teach this year. there’s a free gym here for both staff & students so i’ve recently been starting to go! hopefully it eventually becomes routine for me because right now it’s still alot of effort for me to drag myself there! and it’s kind of intimidating working out in front of some of the students i teach. but i figure it’s worth the small embarrassment in exchange for a free gym & my health!!!
February 2nd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Triggers are a great idea. I used to use my lunch break and then eat my desk the same way you do. That was a really good one. Now my trigger is my dog. The minute I get home from work he is ready to go. There is no ignoring that trigger.