Activating into Activity – Not Extorted into Exercise

Don’t sweat it. Let neuroscience loop you into this healing habit. 2-minute Tip Sheet

Jan 09, 2024

Fitness Is Inner Beauty Facing Outward

Metacardio^©

The good news is that 95% of all U.S. adults don’t exercise, at least not nearly enough. Why good news? Because at the end of this post, you can easily become the other 5%, ahead of the pack, in case you aren’t there already. No sweat.

It’s the second week into the New Year. Look, the crowded gyms are all but deserted, and the hiking trails have mostly returned to Nature’s openness. Where are you?

Most people take regular exercise as mission impossible even though it is not. But because of that, when you do get into it, this can become your ‘keystone habit’. Once you’ve done that, nothing can hold you back from achieving whatever you commit to. Yeah, you show ‘em.

No Blame. No Shame. Just Win The Game.

I don’t blame people for abandoning exercise soon after they start. I did it many times myself. Common sense tells us not to keep doing anything too painful, difficult, or even just unpleasant or inconvenient. Isn’t everyday life already hard enough?

It’s more sensible to go with our natural tendencies of doing the least we need to survive and doing the most of what we enjoy. The open secret few people practice is to mix the two into one as much as possible. It’s a mind game, not a body contest. It doesn’t take discipline, only habit.

People living healthily for over 100 years in the 7 Blue Zones around the world don’t sweat it out in the gym. They don’t sloth, either. They make their daily routines pleasurable, like walking everywhere, biking, gardening, dancing, and spending fun times with people. They keep moving all day without straining or thinking about it.

If you have an enjoyable regular exercise already, by all means, keep it. However, if it requires some production or depends on a good day to carry out, keep that only as a bonus addition to another low-key daily activity routine.

Some people don’t exercise because they’ve never gotten into the habit. If complacency is indeed a habit you can’t break, guess what? It proves your body-mind is capable of forming a strong habit. Use that to form a strong, new, good habit to displace the old one.

If you hate hard exercise, try turning it into an easy daily routine instead. Like brushing your teeth and taking a shower, you don’t think about it unless you skip it a couple of times. Then, the stinking feeling in your body will remind you.

More positively, when a chosen regular physical activity becomes your habit, you look forward to doing it because it feels so good. You reap significant health benefits from as little as 2-8 minutes of moderate daily activity. Still, you’ll naturally increase your intensity and endurance over time to feel fitter. In advanced cases, some get an exercise ‘high’ from natural endorphin (a feel-good hormone).

In any case, you arrive on your own by an inner desire, smiling although sweating. You aren’t getting whipped into it, all the way screaming and swearing. You are activating yourself into a wanted activity. You are not extorted externally into an unwelcome exercise.

Your Mind M.A.T.R.s

Neuroscience shows that the well-studied Motivation-Action-Trigger-Reward neural loop builds durable habits in your brain. There are other good models, too. I find this “4-wheel drive” works very reliably for me and my 2000 program enrollees, as a M.A.T.R. of fact.

M – Motivation

Since you’ve read this far, you already have it. Who doesn’t want to be healthy and fit?

A – Action

It’s the squeakiest of the four wheels. And the most necessary. Duh! The mind game is only for planning. It’s useless unless you act on it. Any action, big or small, long or short, as long as it is consistent, spins the neural loop in your brain circuitry and weaves your habit.

You mustn’t interrupt it until it’s firmly spun down, or it’ll unspool. For instance, if you absolutely can’t walk this day, put on your walking gear to signal your neural loop not to snap. Walk several steps just to make that clear. If it feels good by then, don’t resist doing maybe a few minutes more.

Never go so far or hard that you must quit due to severe discomfort or injury. Stop and take the good you’ve already gotten well before that point. And build up from there at your own pace.

When will your habit loop get hard-wired securely enough? You’ll know because you’ll sorely miss it, as if not showering. If you’ve coupled the activity to another daily routine, then not doing it will feel like not rinsing after brushing your teeth.

T – Trigger

This is key. Stack your workout session on top of something you must do or enjoy doing daily. Your old routine thus becomes coupled with your new ‘exercise discipline’. A customary action now doubles as the automatic trigger for your new activity.

When possible, watching the news is my key cue for the workout hour. A good video I like is another trigger. With no time to read all I want, I usually listen to the audio versions during my daily workout.

Turning paired-up trigger activities into “turn-key” operations,
your “automobile” body will automatically start running once keyed in.
Metacardio^©

Not everyone is a nerd like me. You are the only person who can identify in your daily life which activity “couple” is a perfect match for “marriage”. And walk loops around the block until you come up with what best pumps up your 4-wheel-drive tires, for that M.A.T.R.

Every time I feel cranky or down, I make that my trigger to literally run outside the house for an A-A meeting (attitude adjustment) with Mother Nature. My family knows, no, demands to kick me out and not let me back in until I’m “sober” again. BTW, research shows that exercise can treat anxiety and depression better than drugs or psychotherapy.

R – Reward

This can be quite enticing and rewarding. After reaching an arbitrary (and lenient) exercise milestone, I give myself a medal. This is my private Olympics, so I’m as easy and generous as I want.

I tried rewarding myself with new outfits. It worked okay, only for a while. I never grow to out-fit old outfits because my body size hasn’t changed in decades. But I can justify buying high-quality clothes because they look better on a fitter body and last me forever.

Here’s one exercise gift that keeps on giving. Doing 4-5 miles burns 400-500 calories, about 1/4 of an average daily intake. That’s how much EXTRA FOOD I MUST EAT just to maintain a steady weight. My appetite loves this daily reward.

Go ahead, you have fun now.

Neuroscienceshows that spinning this M.A.T.R. neural loop daily hard-wires a habit in your brain. Once woven, it’s hard to untangle. That’s why old bad habits are so hard to break. But you can rope them off to the wayside by looping up new good habits as your brain’s preferred tenants.

Discipline, in the beginning,
Is merely taking one more step before you quit.
Soon, it becomes a habit you cannot break.
From then on, it takes hardly any effort at all.
Metacardio^©

2-Minute Tip Sheet for Activity Habits

Count What Counts

2 min/day = award eligible. 22 min/day = gold medal. Rewards all in between.
1 mile of motion = 100 calories of consumption. Stroll, walk, jog, or run—the same.
Improvement of 1% a day = 100% in 3 months. That’s how the math adds up.
Simply counting steps counts toward success. Your body is some accountant.

Seriously, No Sit!

Sitting and sitting is like substitute smoking. Stop Sitting Still. Stand-Stretch-Smile. Smarter Still, Stroll. Set up to do it for several minutes every second hour or so. Yessss?

Marriage in Heaven on Earth

Make a perfect match to couple a physical activity, like stepping on a foot block, with a must-do or love-to-do daily routine, like a selected screen time. Once happily married, they’ll never divorce.

Many Turtle Steps Beat One Hare Brain

No pain, no strain; no refrain, all gains – good brains! You want the finish-line glory, not just the starting-gun thrill.

Play like baby seals; no need to train like Navy SEALs.

Fracking and “Fragging” – Fine

Pump all the water you need into your body. Fragment your exercise session into however many segments in order to fit your crazy schedule. In the end, you still get your “liquid gold” without upsetting the ‘environment’.

Don’t Forget, It’s A Brain Game

Besides all the well-known health benefits, daily physical activities like just walking can protect you from Alzheimer’s. A lower weight also lowers the risk of dementia. Who knew?

Walking Off Your Dessert?

A single serving of a typical rich dessert takes 10 miles to work it off. Who has the time or energy? Maybe if you go to Hollywood—the long walk would do you good, as the old joke says.

Slow Spender, Solid Saver

If you want to lose weight, exercise alone is inefficient. Still, you need exercise to lose less muscle. Also, an activity habit is essential for keeping the weight off. And it’ll save you from the “Devil Slide”—a typical biological weight rebound 3-6 months after weight loss. Plus, without exercise, your weight regain will be mostly fatty tissue, not the muscle mass you’ve lost.

“Bad-der”, Fatter gets Better, Faster

If you start out in bad shape, your health gains are on the curve’s initial, fast-rising part. And if you’re heavier, you burn off more than the average 100 calories per mile—such a deal! Fit-and-Fat outperforms Slim-but-Slack in sports and in health.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals

Specific – What, exactly?
Measurable – How much, exactly?
Attainable – Which is workable, not just wishful?
Realistic – Who are you kidding? Real results only!
Timed – When? When again? And again. . .

M.A.T.R. over Mind

Motivation. You already have it. In troubled times, M is also a Must, a Mandate.
The longer it takes to get to your reward, the easier it feels, and the better it lasts.
Action. Just do what you can every day without lapse, even just for 2 minutes. Never let that thread break until your habit loop is spun down tight, or it will unravel.
Trigger. Be trigger-happy with happy triggers. Always couple exercise with some everyday, pleasurable, non-exercise routines. It’s key, as to a running car.
Reward yourself generously for each milestone (no need to be literal). After a while, you’ll get that the activity itself is your best reward.

Congratulations! Your Keystone Habit – Destiny in Hand.

^♪ “You always make it there, you make it anywhere. It’s up to you…”^♪
(Frank Sinatra)

“Your thoughts become your actions.
Your actions become your habits.
Your habits become your character.
Your character becomes your destiny.”
Many Sages

Bonus Podcast to Water Your Healing Habit

Each 2-3 minutes

This fourth stand-alone post is of a series, Healing Habits.

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