Find Your Reason for Getting in Shape

You've often heard us say on the air, when you're in shape, everything in your life gets better.

It's true. When you're in shape, your attitude, behaviour, confidence, strength, energy and overall health and happiness all improve. These positive attributes are part of what help keep you going to the gym. It's the health bandwagon. The more you workout, the more you want to work out.

Conversely, when you're out of shape, you tend to struggle more with all those assets. It's that much harder to drag your carcass to the gym when your attitude, energy and strength are low. In other words, the less you work out, the less you want to.

It's like Newton's first law of motion. An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion.

However, you're not an object. You're a person capable of being inspired to break all of Newton's laws. You just have to find your motivation. Without defining your reasons for getting healthy, you probably won't succeed. Only you know what that reason is. Is it a desire to have a hot body? To have a healthier, longer life? To have more energy? To be more productive at your job? To find love? Have more sex? To be generally a happy person instead of being chronically depressed? All of these goals can be expedited with physical fitness. You need to find the one that most inpsires you and write it down. Put in your fridge with a topless photo of yourself.

Nutritionally, we become overweight because we've eaten too much junk. Obviously. But why do we eat the junk when we all know it's going to help destroy the only body we'll ever have? I think we glom onto these delicious junk foods when we're young, feeling immortal with a raging, efficient metabolism. Later on, that catches up with us. I think many of us become ashamed. We don't like our bodies very much and think, "To heck with it. What's the difference if I eat this? I'm a pig anyway. What's one more Big Mac?"

The answer to that question is simple. That one Big Mac moves you one step farther from your now clearly defined goal. That whole wheat turkey sandwich, equally satisfying, gets you one step closer.