How to Start Exercising, Actually Enjoy It, and Feel Loved

 Have you ever thought about beginning the process of working out only to stop because you really didn’t know how to start or what to even do?

If you have, it’s ok, you’re in pretty good company. I was pretty lost myself and I oftentimes found myself just kind of defaulting to what my doctor usually recommended or what I read in articles and magazines which was to start running. Since I hated running, and still don’t find it to be an enjoyable activity, that made me dread the thought of trying to get a workout routine started. 

• I hate running
• Is there no other way to lose weight effectively?
• I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing
• I hate running

Do any of these thoughts or questions pop into your head?

They popped into mine all the time.

I know I listed “I hate running” twice in that list but honestly, I hated running so much, that particular thought popped into my head multiple times.  The anxiety that I felt over the prospect of running or riding an exercise bike or elliptical machine for endless hours always kind of played into my hesitation or outright avoidance of trying to start working out again.

I had defaulted to doing these activities in the past and honestly, I was miserable the whole time and I never actually saw the benefits of losing weight or having any kind of tone or definition in my muscles.

It’s time to try something new…

When I restarted my health journey 6 years ago, I made a lot of mistakes.

Whether it was charging ahead half-cocked with incomplete or completely wrong nutrition information or deciding it was a brilliant idea to work out 1-2 hours a day with a massive calorie deficit 5 days a week, I made quite a few detrimental health decisions.

However, the one thing that I did actually get correct was my focus when I worked out. Instead of focusing completely on cardio activities, I decided to try something new and very different for me. I had read a little information on the benefits of lifting weights and how building muscle through that process actually aided in overall weight loss.

I didn’t know much about the process and truthfully, I had never really done weight training because I found it intimidating but I decided to try it anyway because for me, it wasn’t cardio, and it might be an activity that I could actually stick with for a longer time period.

Everyone’s got to start somewhere, and for me, it was 2 cans of soup

When I first started on this path, I didn’t own any weights. No dumbbells, kettlebells, weight plates, nothing.

I found this very simple 12-week weightlifting program online and got it, it was very straightforward and easy to follow, and I was so determined to start that I began by using 2 cans of soup, which each weighed less than a single pound, as my weights.

I was so weak and out of shape, those 2 cans really kicked me in the butt, it was so hard to get through those initial workouts. These workouts weren’t complex either, they were literally doing 7 repetitions of a movement, like bicep curls, 3 times.

But that’s the important lesson in this really, just because something is simple, doesn’t mean that it’s easy.

Moving to real weights after a week, my husband bought me my first real weight set and it had a pair of 1-pound weights, 3-pound weights, and 5-pound weights

So, after about a week of using less than 1 pound soup cans, I moved up to the 1-pound pair of dumbbells.

They were tiny and pink, but I remember thinking to myself,” these are so much heavier than the soup cans. I can’t do this, it’s too hard.” I kept going though, and after 2 weeks, I moved from my little pink weights to the 3-pound dumbbells and when that happened, I remember feeling this huge sense of pride in what I had been able to accomplish.

I know it probably doesn’t sound like a lot going from 1 to 3 pounds in each hand, but it’s those small movements and wins that are the key to motivating you to keep going forward.

What’s all this have to do with functional fitness?

I stuck with that simple weightlifting program for a long time, well over the 12 weeks it laid out.

Every time I finished, I would just start over again. One day, I was watching a documentary on Netflix with my husband, and it was about the 2015 CrossFit Games while I was watching it, I realized, maybe there’s a lot more to strength training than just the bicep curls, tricep extensions, and weighted squats I had been doing.

Now, having that realization and doing something about it took a pretty long time, about 2 years actually, but that’s the great part about health journeys, they just keep helping you learn and grow.

What is functional fitness?

So, the name itself can come across as somewhat intimidating, but functional fitness is really just practicing those movements that the human body was created to do by God.

They are natural movements that the body is hardwired to perform, and no one had to teach you to do them. For example, every time you go to sit down on the toilet or get out of a chair, you are performing a squat movement. No one had to teach you to do it, your body just knows how to effectively go from a standing position into a seated or squatting position. Functional movements always involve the use of multiple joints versus a single joint movement like a leg extension on a machine.

For example, when performing a squat, you are activating and using your hips, knees, and ankles from a lower-body perspective while using your upper body to help stabilize your back and core. Basically, you’re using your entire body in some way to either balance or lower into the squat. That’s functional fitness.

The really cool part about functional fitness is that since it involves practicing movements that you need to do on an everyday basis, lifting groceries, getting on/off a toilet, getting off the floor, you are really creating a situation where you are improving your capacity for independence throughout your entire life.

Said another way, it helps keep you independent and free from potentially having to ask for help to go to the bathroom or get off the floor for the rest of your life.

Focusing your workouts on performing mostly functional movements has a huge host of benefits, but specifically, it helps build muscle and bone density and improves your brain 

Osteoporosis, or loss of bone mass and density, and sarcopenia, loss of lean muscle mass, are real dangers that many people face as they age. Incorporating strength training plays a huge role in potentially reducing the risk of developing osteoporosis or sarcopenia.

I’ve said this before, but God created our bodies to be beautifully intelligent and resilient machines.

If your bones do not experience any kind of compression or torsional forces on them, your body thinks that they don’t need to have as much bone mass because you’re not really using them. So, osteoclasts are then instructed by the body to break down the bone tissue so that material can be better utilized somewhere else.

If you do place tension or compression on your bones, which happens through strength training, your body reacts by using osteoblasts to reinforce those muscle connections on the bone by remineralizing and increasing the bone density. Something similar happens with your lean muscle.

As you lift weights or do bodyweight exercises, you create tears in your muscles. As you sleep, those tears are rebuilt and strengthened so that it’s more difficult to tear or break the muscle tissue resulting in increased lean muscle mass.

Functional fitness and working on functional movements do all these things and more. Specifically, functional fitness helps improve brain function and neuroplasticity. As you start to learn how to do movements safely and quickly, your brain has to create new pathways in its neural network so that it can adapt to learning how to coordinate and balance your body.

As you learn more and more movements and put them together in unique ways, you increase your brain-body connections and improve your coordination and agility. Strength training also helps out your mood as causes the brain to release endorphins which improve your mood and decrease anxiety.

I know how hard it is to start a new lifestyle, especially one that involves working out and changing your nutrition.

Here are some simple tips that you can use to get started on your own new journey

• Plan out your time to work out ahead of time. It doesn’t have to be long, try 20-30 minutes a day, 3-4 times a week. Even if you start with 2 days, that’s better than not doing it at all
• Don’t worry about using weights or equipment when you are first starting out. Focus on using your bodyweight first as oftentimes, just that will be enough to start your strength training journey
• Focus on the basics – squats, push-ups, deadlifts, and strict presses. These are the fundamentals of functional movement and are variations of the movements that you do every day whether you realize it or not
• Focus on your form first. Speed and weight will eventually come but you have to ensure that you are doing the movements correctly and safely so that you can build strength, speed, and coordination with minimal chance of getting hurt
• Ask for help when you aren’t sure. Community is an amazing thing, something that I undervalued for a really long time. Having people to reach out to for help and support is so critical to being able to stick to a change in lifestyle, whether it is nutrition, working out, or even praying. 
• Get a coach. Coaches provide instruction, encouragement, and accountability which are all key components of success when it comes to changes in life. I know that my God-given purpose is to be a coach and to help others get healthier so that they, in turn, can fulfill their own God-given purposes in life.

Your health and wellness matter to God. He created all of us to move and work 

God created all of us for a purpose and in order to fulfill that purpose, we have to be able to move and work for as long as possible. Even before the fall, we were created to work with perfect bodies, for eternity.

In Genesis 2:15, it’s stated, “The Lord God put the man in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”

Our bodies were designed with work in mind. Functional fitness allows us to build strength but also allows us to build physical independence across our entire lives. This physical independence is critical to all of us fulfilling our God-given purposes in life.

For a really long time, the majority of my adult life really, I couldn’t fulfill my purpose, I simply wasn’t well enough to do it, either physically, mentally or spiritually. I was truly living a life from the sidelines, a bystander in my own life. I couldn’t participate with my family because I just wasn’t physically able to do it.

I distinctly remember my kids at different points asking me to play with them and my response was always, “I’ll watch you, you go ahead and play.” The inability to really participate with my family had a huge toll on my emotional state. I wasn’t effective as a mother, a wife, or even an employee, at least that’s how I felt.

Not having a relationship with God had a massive negative impact on my spiritual and emotional health as well. It wasn’t until I accepted who I was in God’s eyes that everything really started to turn around for me, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It was only then that I started to get well enough that I could truly fulfill my purpose.

At the end of the day, everyone is on a journey, we’re all works in progress, especially me. I’m still on my journey 6 years later but now, thanks to my relationship with God and practicing strength training through functional fitness, I’m the strongest and healthiest I’ve ever been in my adult life. It is never too late for you to start your journey; it just takes that first step in faith for you to begin to fulfill your purpose.