Any weight lost through a temporary change to your diet or exercise program is exactly that, temporary.

I’ll return to this idea in much greater detail when discussing ways to put together a food program, but it equally applies to fitness and activity.  It’s wonderful to suddenly add a burst of exercise to your weekly routine.  If, however, you’re doing so for the sole purpose of weight loss, with the intention of stopping the moment you hit your goal weight, then I hope you also plan on gaining that weight back, because that’s what will happen.

Instead, if you’ve decided that weighing less will have a positive impact on your life, you need to realize that not only do you need to make long-term changes to the way you eat, but you must also integrate physical activity into your everyday routine going forward.

Activity is Not Punishment

The first step is realizing that being active is not a punishment.  You are not, in all likelihood, training for the Olympics. So the goal is NOT to push yourself beyond all human tolerance.  Instead, the goal is that when you tap on your Fitbit to get a step count for a day it displays a number, not a shrug emoji.

To do this, it’s important that being active – in whatever form it ends up taking for you – is enjoyable.  Because if it isn’t, you simply won’t make it a permanent part of your life.

Pick Your Favorite, or Favorites

The great thing is, there’s no limit or constraints as to what constitutes being active.  If you’re up and moving around for sustained intervals of time, and even better if the intensity of those bursts vary, then you’re officially being “active.”   Walking, running, Yoga, Zumba, Roomba, Pilates, yardwork, tennis, basketball, swimming, etc. … all of those quality.  Except I think one of those is a robot vacuum cleaner.  So maybe that one doesn’t.  But the rest are good.

Picking your activity is just the beginning though.  It’s making time for it in your life, and making it essential enough that you’ll keep it high up on your priority list even when life gets busy.  How you do that is your biggest challenge.

Option 1: Activity As It’s Own Reward

Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones.  Maybe you’ll start running and realize you really enjoy it. Or you’ll join a gym and something just clicks and the high you get from working out is addictive and has you coming back for more. 

As long as you don’t confuse your love of the RESULTS of the activity (weight lost) with your love of doing the activity, this is the ideal solution.  Because finding something you enjoy means finding something that you’ll be able to make a part of your everyday life.

Option 2: Pursue Non-Weight Loss Goals

Another way to make activity part of your life is for the activity to be an important part of another project in your life, unrelated to your weight loss.  For example, you might have promised yourself when you got lost weight that you’d run in the Boston Marathon one day.  That’s an amazing goal and obviously a lot of work, and to do that, running would certainly become a huge part of your everyday routine.   But because it would be in service of such a positive goal, not some sort of punishment or weight loss obligation, it would bring joy and purpose.  Focusing your efforts on a large manual labor intensive home improvement project would also fit into this category.

Option 3: Renew Social Bonds, or Forge New Ones

Physical activity can be a great way to meet people, or simply share time with friends or family.  Get a bunch of your friends together and join an adult soccer league in your town.  Go on an evening walk with your girlfriend, boyfriend, partner or spouse. Or sign up classes at a gym, either with friends or to make new ones. 

Let’s face it, one of the things that extra weight often does is isolate us from social situations.  As you’re starting to look and feel better, take the new you out for a ride and go meet new people.  Or simply make up for lost time with old friends.  Either way, this is a nice way to integrate activity into your life.

Option 4: “Me” Time

Or, you know, not.  There’s nothing wrong with some me time too.  Maybe you want to use your activity time to carve away some moments just for you.  Time away from family and friends.  The hour a day that’s just you.  At a gym, walking around the block, on the treadmill in the basement with headphones on, wherever… just time where the focus is only on you.

Nothing wrong with that, especially if it gives you the motivation to make sure you’re moving around as often as you should be.

Option 5: Multi-Tasking

I’ll admit I’m partial to this one, because this is where I landed. Cutting right down to it, this method is really simple – you find a way to do something ELSE that you really enjoy at the same time that you’re being active, so that it makes the being active part completely tolerable.

Love listening to music? Your workout time can be when you allow yourself to listen to your favorite songs, or listen to those new songs you’ve just downloaded.  Or catch up on your favorite podcasts.

For me, our treadmill is aimed right at the television, and I’ve binge watched my way to weight loss. I started out with 30 minutes per day, and now I walk between 60 and 90 minutes each morning, depending mostly upon what I’m watching.  I’ve blown through a bunch of TV shows that I had on my list but I hadn’t gotten around to like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and revisited old favorites like the Sopranos and the West Wing. 

Doesn’t matter WHAT you watch, or listen to, but it’s important that it’s something you really want to see or hear, so that you’re actually excited about the process.  In fact, it started out that I always watched a show while I was walking.  But once I get really deep into a show, I turn it around and say that I can ONLY watch that particular show WHEN I am walking.  That’s lead to a few marathon sessions on the treadmill when I’ve simply had to push myself to resolve a particularly big plot twist or cliff hanger!

Start Slowly If You Must, But Start Now

In the end, only you can figure out what activity suits you and how you can integrate it into your life.  And perhaps it will change over time. The key for right now is to get off the couch and try something, and if that doesn’t work try something else.

Start slowly if you need to. Remember, as some great mathematician must have said at one point – something is more than nothing. So if you’re not doing anything right now, whatever activity you can start with today, will get you going. Anything goes as long as it gets you moving.

The only thing you really can’t do is spoil Game of Thrones for me, that’s next on my list.  I hear it’s pretty good.