Hello all,

I was wondering how all of you keep motivated with exercising?

I love how working out makes me feel but I don't like the idea of doing it beforehand. I know so many people that say that it's normal but I go through slumps where the idea of working out makes me tired and no amount of reminding myself how I will feel after will convince me enough to just go do it.

I have a Fitbit and I compete with people at work during the week for steps, but they aren't very competitive and I can win the challenges by just doing 5k steps a day. Which doesn't seem near enough to qualify as exercise.

What are your thoughts? What keeps you going?

Thanks for reading

Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

here is a link to motivation that has been posted on the forum. Hope it helps.

http://www.bariatricpal.com/topic/373997-suggestions-and-motivation/?hl=%2Bmotivation#entry4227663

Typically, it's that competition with friends and family members that motivates me, but on days where you just don't feel like doing it, but know that you have to, I like to put in the headphones, turn on Netflix and before I know it, I'm a couple of episodes into whatever I'm watching and just about done before I know it!

It was tough at first because I went to the gym without a specific plan and would often find myself getting there and either wasting time looking for what I wanted to do or just walking around wasting time. Once it registered I was getting very little benefit from that, I built a regimented workout from workoutlabs.com and used that to keep me on track with the exercises I wanted to do and based on the equipment that was available to me. As I get farther into working out, I can increase the amounts or difficulties of the exercises. It's really been a great tool for me and they also have some free workouts to try, but the customization is worth the money....

The truth is that motivation is fleeting and you'll never have it consistent control of it - you need to find another way to get yourself to work out. I get it 'out of the way' in the mornings before work and try to see working out as brushing my teeth: it's something I have to do even if I don't really enjoy doing it. I also line up my favorite podcasts to listen to while I'm working out so I have something to look forward to.