Five Good Reasons to Exercise

I was late getting to the gym the other night. When I arrived the parking lot was still packed. The good news was my walk from where I parked the car to the front door also doubled as my warm-up routine.

While it’s true January is a huge month for us to hit the gyms and fitness centers because of New Year’s resolutions and commitments, it seems like more and more people are sticking with their exercise routines throughout the year.

Not everyone exercises for the same reasons though. Some are training to compete in 10K events or triathlons. Others are trying to loose weight or to simply maintain what they have. But some of the most positive effects of exercise have nothing to do with performance or image.

Exercise can help to relieve stress, build confidence and to provide self-care and nurturing. Fitness is not just for the athletic-minded; it’s for all of us. To help provide motivation to either begin, or maintain, an exercise program here are five good, real-life reasons to exercise:

Discover Your Source of Strength

Each exercise session has a goal, a target. Sometimes the goal is to complete a run in X number of minutes, or to lift X amount of weight, or to simply survive. Regardless of the goal, an important aspect of exercising is to create a situation where we can push ourselves and then immediately see the results.

Think of your exercise routine like a lab experiment. The hypothesis you set out to prove is to see if you can achieve what you have determined to accomplish – to do 100 pushups, complete an aerobics class, etc. Once accomplished, you can transfer these feelings of confidence and success from the gym (your laboratory) and into the other parts of your life.

Exercise is indeed a good venue to discover your source of strength and character. It builds confidence and instills a spirit that better connects your mind to your body. It helps you appreciate the value of goal setting and ultimately goal attainment. It creates better life balance. Simply put, exercise helps you feel better about yourself.

Control Stress and Anxiety

Some days are just a bummer. Even people like me, who write personal development and success blogs, have bad days too. We make mistakes, miss deadlines, and sometimes people just piss us off.

Exercise provides a healthy outlet to release the day’s stress and anxiety. It’s also a good antidote for depression. I know this from personal experience.

About 12 years ago my wife, Mary Beth, was suffering from severe depression. She was in a bad spot and didn’t see much hope for recovery. Our next-door neighbor, Mary, suggested that Mary Beth begin to take morning walks with her as a way to get my wife out of the house and moving.

No matter the weather, Mary would not allow Mary Beth to miss a morning walk. This routine went on for a couple of months and my wife’s depression was slowly lifting. The walks with Mary ended when she went back to work, but Mary Beth kept walking. She realized how much better she felt afterwards and didn’t even consider stopping this healing habit.

Mary Beth took her morning walks to the next level. She lost a cousin to Leukemia years before and felt compelled to register for the Rock n’ Roll marathon which raises money for the Leukemia Society.

She solicited her pledges and began to train hard for the event. When Mary Beth crossed the finishing line on a hot June afternoon in San Diego, she was also beginning the process of putting her life back together. In that moment of fatigue and exhaustion, she also felt hope, courage and a new-found energy to keep going.

Letting Go

Not everyone is born an athlete. Only a select few actually become professional athletes.

The rest of us pay their salaries. But in the gym, on the basketball court, we can let go and be the one who attempts the clutch shot or makes a key defensive stop. We are not passively watching, we are engaged and doing.

In elementary school I was always picked last for the playground games. When I’m exercising, I always finish first. After I burn through a workout, I feel like the guy who hits the walk-off homerun. And the good news is, I get to do it again tomorrow!

Listen to Your Body

There is a direct connection between our physical and mental health. When we are fatigued our thinking is not as sharp and our confidence wanes. But when we are rested and full of energy, our actions are more deliberate and our results are more significant.

Listen to your body – it will tell you what you need. The medium to hear what it is saying is exercise. Even now, six years into an exercise regimen that is an integral part of my life, I use my workouts to dial into how my body is doing.

If my knees are hurting or if my shoulder is sore, I pay attention to these signals. I look to see if there is any unacknowledged stress of anxiety in life and I review my eating and sleeping habits. Typically if my body is hurting or breaking down, there is a reason other than the workouts. Information is power; and this information gives me the power to begin changing what I need to in order to optimize both my physical and mental health.

Me Time

Our lives are indeed busy. Expectations have increased because of the dependency we have on email and text messaging. We are expected to be available and accountable at all times. However, there is 75 minutes each day when I’m not by my computer or cell phone, and when no one is lingering outside my office door waiting to see me.

Fro 75 minutes each day, I get to have Me Time. I plug my music into my ears and I drift off to a different world – a world of thinking, meditating and reflecting on any thing that comes to mind; a world just for me.

Self-care is very important. You need some down time, too. It’s important to be in a place you have created. This safe place is your refuge, if only for a little while, from the rigors and demands of your daily life. Use this time to re-charge and re-focus. Use this time to become reacquainted with yourself.

You are much more productive when you are whole, healthy and feeling good about yourself. Exercise is a great prescription for a happy and successful life.

Do you love exercising? If you are interested in health and nutrition, where are you going to find the best information? The internet houses the best selection of exercise and weight loss information. If you need to learn about the nutritional value in whole foods or you want to learn how to live longer, sign up online today.

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