A secret to finding the energy to exercise.
A secret to win. It may be your way. It was my way.
What if I had to do it over again? What if I had to mobilize myself toward getting my blood sugar under control? What if I had to, once again, get my body fat and my immune system under control, so as not to die early? I would, knowing what I know now, avoid the one giant mistake I made, over and over again.
The big mistake I made, was that I tried to do an all-or-nothing method. I tried to do everything at once. I tried to fix my problems in one fell swoop. I tried to be a health and fat loss superhero coming to my own rescue, fueled with will power. I imagined myself making it all happen in a week. Every time I mustered the motivation and the will power and started to battle what I believed to be, the herculean task of getting healthy, it only ended in failure. The energy was lost. The motivation was lost, and the will power was no where to be found. For me, and maybe for many others, this approach clearly was not the right approach. It took years to discover a good path for me. One that I could easily stay on. Little did I know, the answer was really quite easy and doable.
It was right before Christmas and I was sitting in my office, after a long stressful day, looking out the window at a beautiful evening snowfall. Those of you who know the north country, know just how magical falling snow, under streetlights, can feel. It is serene, inviting, and, in spite of it being cold, makes everything feel cozy. That night, I decided to go for a walk before I got in my car to head home to some comfort food and TV. I walked along my office building and back again, enjoying the snowflakes on my face and the silence of the night. Right after I started walking, just a few steps along, I felt a small bit of energy take hold of me. I took a deeper breath and somehow began to feel somewhat more energetic. So, I walked. After one lap, I turned around and walked the length of the building again. Each time I walked the length of the building on the quiet, soft snow, I felt more energetic. After the 6th lap of this surprise walk, I was finally done. I was not out of energy, but my feet were wet and my ears were frozen. I went home.
The lesson I learned that evening was life changing. Very clearly, I noticed that once I did just a little bit of walking, my body seemed like it wanted to do a little more walking. It was as if my body was making energy, for not just the walk I was on, but it seemed like it was producing enough energy for any additional walking I might want to do. The more I did, the more I wanted to do. I felt like I had a perpetual energy system. There was something about the stillness and silence of that night that allowed me to notice what my body was feeling and doing for me.
That night taught me that as long as I can do even the tiniest bit of any kind of exercise, my body would chip in, be my teammate, and provide the extra energy to do a little bit more. If I said, “yes,” to doing that little bit more exercise that my body was apparently helping me do, my body would provide enough energy for me to do even more. And as it turns out, this beautiful cycle of ‘energy when you need it,’ that mother nature built into my system, is not unique to me. We all have multiple energy systems that love to produce energy for muscle contraction and exercise. Systems like the phosphocreatine system that produces very quick energy, like you would use in a 10 second sprint, is one such system. The anaerobic system that produces energy when you cannot get enough oxygen into your system, like when you do hard work like circuit training or HIT (High intensity Training), is another system. Another still is the aerobic system that kicks in when you ARE taking in enough oxygen (like on a brisk walk), when the powerhouses of your cells, the mitochondria, are oxidizing fuel for energy.
These systems love to produce energy and they will be there to always support you if you learn just a few of the very easy basics of how to fuel them, (what to eat) and how to make them more robust, (what kinds of exercise to perform.)
But for now, my secret for you is this. Mother nature made sure we would always have some energy to support our most critical needs for as long as possible. So, if you simply jump start your bodies’ willingness and ability to provide energy, it will. If you can knock over the first domino in this giant sequence of ‘energy dominos’, it will react and energy will be provided. In fact, If you do even the tiniest bit of exercise, your beautifully created body, will kick into gear and provide the energy for you to do a little bit more, and then a bit more and even more.
Many days its all I can do to just show up. Most days I don’t really want to exercise. But I know the secret. No matter how exhausted I am, if I simply do anything, say, pick up a weight and walk around the gym with it once or twice, my body seems to say to me, “I am with you, here is the energy to do even more exercise .” So, I do another exercise, and another, and another. My body produces energy I did not even know it had. Before you know it, I have done a significant amount of work, which of course, was infinitely better than sitting on the sofa.
Now comes the second part of the secret. My reward. When I do something good for my muscles, I eat and sleep. I eat whole foods and plenty of protein and get 8-9 hours of high quality sleep. When I wake up in the morning, and I look a little better and I feel better, I am automatically motivated to do more exercise, more healthy eating and more quality sleeping. So the great cycle of life long fitness continues. It never ends. If you can just remember, ‘do something, anything, no matter how little,’ your incredible energy systems, will kick in by providing the energy. Together, you and your body will make progress. That progress becomes positive reinforcement and that positive reinforcement, perpetually drives more progress. It is a wonderful positive life loop you can live with that changes you in a great way, forever! This progress does not rely on will power. This positive cycle, and never ending progress, relies on just one, small, simple habit you develop. Just show up and do something. The secret is now yours.
“Being fit is mostly just about showing up.”
Thomas
