What keeps you motivated to exercise?

 A few weeks ago on Twitter, American College of Sports Medicine, (ACSM) posed a question: What keeps you motivated to exercise?

I tweeted my 104-character response: “I love being able to do physically difficult things. I feel GREAT when I exercise, but feel grouchy and sluglike when I don't.”

A few things kept me from my regular workout over the past few weeks. I went to Paris for a week. I was stuck on a plane. I walked a lot (miles and miles a day) and I danced at night, but I did not do my regular workout. Then I came home and I had a pretty bad sinus infection that made it hard for me to do much more than sit in a chair and be grumpy.

Today was my first real day back at the gym, after two and a half weeks. The break has given me the opportunity to reflect a little more deeply on what motivates me to keep exercising. I think everyone has his own answers to this question, but these are mine.

• I like people better when I exercise. Especially when I exercise with others. I am a naturally shy person, but when I was sick, I could feel myself wanting to draw further into my cocoon. When I went out, to the coffee shop or the grocery store, I felt irritated by my fellow humans. Too noisy, too slow, too pushy, whatever…but then I spent an hour working out with six other women this morning, and we were all getting sweaty together, and by the end of the hour, I thought they were the most beautiful women God ever put on the Earth. Even when I left the gym, I found myself smiling at people and saying hello. I felt friendly again. I think that comes from doing physically challenging things with other humans. It’s kind of what we are made to do.
• I value being able to do difficult things. When we were in Paris, we climbed the stairs on the Eiffel tower as far as you are allowed to. The benefit: we paid 1/3 the money and had no line at all. I am thankful that, at 41 years of age, my knees and back and feet and lungs are capable of climbing 720 steps up and 720 steps down. We also walked, I would estimate, at least 5 miles per day during our trip. If I didn’t exercise regularly, I would not have been able to handle that much activity comfortably.
• I like being able to dance, especially to fast music. I am not a big talker. I can’t express myself adequately through spoken words. Yes, I can write, but words aren’t alive and they aren’t attached to me. When I meet people, I can’t ask them to go read my blog to get to know me better. But when I dance, I am able to be everything I am: mother, daughter, saint, sinner, lover, fighter, thinker, maniac. I can express all that through movement, but only if my body is working. For me, not being able to move is like being mute. And to keep dancing all night, to keep up with fast music, I need to have strength and endurance.
• Exercise lifts my spirits. Scientists say that brain chemicals called endorphins kick in when we exercise. They mask pain, give us energy, and push us through fatigue. All I know is that I can be having the worst and crappiest day, and about 7 minutes into a good run, dance, or a great exercise class, I start to feel happy, and I stay that way for several hours afterward.
• It quiets my mind. I have a busy brain. I think about things that are my responsibility, like my job, and how I’m going to pay for my kids’ college, but I also think about things that are way out of my sphere, like how humans are consuming resources at a faster rate than they can be replaced. If I don’t reign it in, the thought factory cranking in my brain will keep me up at night, making lists and envisioning outcomes. Exercise helps. The more physically and mentally challenging an activity is, the larger the percentage of my attention it requires, and eventually there is no room in my head for anything other than the task at hand. Difficult things like dancing push out thoughts of anything else. Sometimes I need to think about things in a quiet space. In that case, I can go for a run: there, all my body has to do is move forward. I have time to pick through all the threads of my thoughts while the endorphins do their work, making all my problems seem simpler, easier, fixable. 

Everyone’s motivations are different. You might like to maintain your dress size or keep your blood pressure down. It doesn’t matter why you do it, but it’s helpful to take the time to identify your motivation, so that when you encounter fitness roadblocks (and everyone does), you remember why you were doing it in the first pace.