How Exercise Will Change Your Life

Yes, I’m a believer! Regular exercise has changed the shape of reality as I know it, and it can change yours, too.

Now, I’m not a physician and I don’t have a degree in physiology or kinetics (yet!), so I may not be able to tell you the scientific words for various bodily functions or parts, but I am happy, healthy, fit person who used to be  sad, lonely, depressive and obese–and that is in large part due to the fact years ago I decided to make exercise a top priority in my life.

The first rule of exercising to live by is:

Just do it! It will get easier as you go along. You will someday (as hard as it is to believe) want to exercise.

Exercising makes us feel powerful. It makes us feel happy.  It’s like a natural drug that produces that warm, fuzzy excited feeling.

You can do anything that gets you moving, but if you are new I suggest something where the intimidation factor is zero: walking alone or with a friend, or a large aerobics class where you can feel anonymous if self-consciousness is an issue for you.

Personally I run many miles at least 3-4 times per week, and go the my gym to lift weights (and use the track during really hot weather when its too warm to run outdoors).

I also love biking, swimming, kayaking, canoeing, frisby, and soccer. Other good options are dance or martial arts classes, water aerobics, just playing catch with a friend, partner or your children. Find something you enjoy and do it! The feelings you get will be reward enough.

Here I need to have a quick word about another benefit of exercise. Getting personal, I haven’t always (as I’ve already said) been a really happy, healthy, well-adjusted person. In fact, for many years of my childhood and teenager hood, I suffered from depression, low self-esteem, lonliness, eating disorders, and a host of other issues that made my life very difficult. I felt angry and powerless much of time.

In retrospect, one of the first things I did that began to slowly improve my quality of life was to exercise regularly. I can’t stress enough how powerful exercise can be in improving mood and lifting negative feelings of depression, sadness, anger, and stress.

I joke with my friends today that exercising is my ‘natural anger-management’!

So even if you think that adding exercise to the mix will just be another stress to put on your ‘to-do’ list, I can tell you it’s not. It will help you manage every other aspect of your life, because as we  all know, how we feel does have a  real effect on how much we can get accomplished–painful emotions do somehow manage to take up time!

So I really encourage you to begin making exercise a priority in your life. It may take a while; I certainly didn’t start out with marathons and triathalons in mind!

But slowly and surely if you think it’s important exercise will begin to play an important role in your life. And I guarantee you that it will improve your life considerably!