Author: Alex

I’ve done a lot of talking about getting ready to start running, but you know, at some point you have to transition from the state of thinking about something to actually doing it. Procrastinators know this moment well. It can also seem a little daunting, because if your time in high school was anything like mine, running has all sorts of horrific associations with it.

But at some point, you’ve just got to do it.

However, I can tell you confidently that after years of avoiding that whole fitness thing, you’re not going to be able to just tie your shoes on one day and burst out of your front door to knock off a couple quick miles before breakfast. And if you can, let the record state that I hate you for it.

It’s rough to get started on something you’ve dedicated years of your life to avoiding. But it’s worth giving it a shot, because you might decide (like I did) that you love the shit out of running. Throwing yourself into a wall repeatedly isn’t going to help you discover that love, though. You have to start out slow and work your way up as you build your body, and that’s okay.

So how do you get started? Here’s the tricks that worked for me.

You have to walk before you can run
You’re not going to be able to run a distance that you can’t even walk, or run for a length of time for which you can’t sustain a good walking pace. So that’s the place to start. Walk. Walk a lot. Walk everywhere. And don’t just meander – walk like you have a purpose. Walk quickly enough that it does make you breathe a little bit harder, and keep pushing yourself over the weeks until you can walk fast enough that the next logical step really does seem like running.

I know that walking is not exactly the most electrifying exercise in the world. But if you don’t partake in regular physical activity (even as much as walking to the bus stop every day) it’s probably the best place to start, a ramp-up to more difficult exercise. It’s also nicer to the environment than driving everywhere. Get an MP3 player and get yourself some podcasts; I time a lot of things where I don’t need music for pacing (like bike rides) with podcasts, and it also makes the activity more interesting.

Once you’re good with walking, it’s time to kick it up to the next level.

Warm Up
Just as a note, before you even try out these tricks, you need to warm up first. Stretch, walk a bit (I normally do a quarter mile or a little less) and then do a quick stretch again if any of your muscles are feeling tight. You really don’t want to just bomb out of your front door and hit the ground running. Trust me. Also, cool down at the end, just do the same thing in reverse. Your muscles will send you a nice fruit basket once they get over hating you for exercising at all.

Intervals
This is a piece of advice I got from a friend of mine who was in the Army. (Actually, oddly enough, all the good running advice I’ve ever gotten has been from Army people.) I’m personally not a fan of intervals because I prefer to run on trails, but I know they work really, really well for some people.

It’s simple. You start out on a sidewalk where there are light poles, telephone poles, whatever you can find at regular, fairly closely spaced intervals for a good stretch. Say you’re on a stretch of sidewalk with ten light poles. Run from pole 1 to 2, then slow to a walk from 2 to 3, then run again from 3 to 4. You get the pattern. Once you can do that without dying, start making the running intervals longer. Run from 1 to 3, then walk from 3 to 4, then run from 4 to 6. You get the idea. After a while, you’ll be able to get rid of the walking intervals entirely.

Shuffle
This is actually the method that I used to learn to run, taught to me by the Army recruiters. They called it the Airborne Shuffle. Since it’s difficult to try to describe wholly as text, have a terrible video that I have prepared as an illustration:

The basic idea is that you run, and you push yourself to keep running until you feel like you can’t keep going any more, at which point you drop down to what is effectively running in place. You’ll be barely inching forward, but you should still be shuffling your feet at close to the pace you were using to run. Shuffle until you’ve caught your breath, then start running again.

What I particularly like about the shuffle is that it prevents your muscles from cramping, which is something walking has never done for me. Particularly when you’re starting out, your muscles are going to be angry with you, and they will cramp out of sheer bloody-minded vengeance if you just give them half a chance. Shuffling keeps your muscles moving but lets you catch your breath.

And trust me, when you’re first starting out, you want every scrap of breath you can get your lungs on.

Breathe
When you’re starting out, I think your body tends to go into full-scale holy shit what are you doing to me red alert. You’ll get muscle cramps (hint: don’t stop moving unless it’s a 10 second pause to stretch it out) and you’ll want to start panting for breath.

Don’t do it. It’s a trap. You’ve probably noticed that if you start panting, that can lead pretty easily to wheezing, and then you’re crouched on the side of the trail with your head between your knees and a helpful old lady asking if you need an ambulance while her pekapoo sniffs at your shoes in the meditative way dogs have of showing they’re thinking it’s a good time for urine.

You want to avoid this.

The best way to do this is count paces while you breathe. For example, breathe in for three, breathe out for three. If you hit a point where you feel like you need to breathe faster than that, slow down and catch your breath. You can mirror this effect by trying to talk while you run, but this tends to creep people out if you’re clearly by yourself.

Another Army guy trick I learned is that you should breathe in through your mouth, but out through your nose. This makes your exhalation slower and keeps your from sucking wind too hard, so to speak. (Though if you do this, I recommend you carry some kleenex along.) Again, if you’re doing this and you hit a point where you feel like you’re not getting enough air, slow down.

Cheat codes
There are no cheat codes.

Don’t get frustrated
You’re going to be slow when you start. You’re going to have to stop and walk or shuffle so that you can catch your breath. It’s okay. It will get better, I promise. The first few weeks are the toughest, but you will see improvement, and you will start feeling good. Don’t get frustrated. It’s a work in progress, it’s a challenge, but you can do it.

Promise.

Hi, I’m Rachael. I’m a fat nerd. I also run, bike, and have done kung fu for eight years. I’m not writing this because I want to be some kind of fitness guru. Hell no, that would be ridiculous. I’m writing this because I’ve got a lot of friends that struggle with the [metaphorical] Fitness Demon and I’m hoping my experience might make things a little easier for them. I’m also writing this because it’s a lot of stuff I wish someone had told me, back when I was making attempt after unsuccessful attempt to get into this exercise thing. If it helps you out, great.

I learned pretty early on in the exercise process that having goals is one of those necessary things, like drinking plenty of water and eating peanut butter straight from the jar. (Just kidding about the last one (mostly).) Anything you can possibly do to help yourself get motivated and stay there is important. For me, having specific goals works really well because I have a competitive personality, and that keys in to it. I don’t have to be competing with someone else. I can compete with myself.

That said, setting goals can sometimes be a trickier prospect than you think. Here’s what I’ve learned:

They have to be reasonable and attainable
This was actually the hardest lesson for me. I don’t like being reasonable. If I want to do something, my default setting is balls to the wall, take no prisoners. This might work when it involves staying up to three in the morning trying to make some kind of ridiculous word count, but the sad truth is your body is not a well-oiled machine that can take that kind of abuse right out of the gate. Physical limitations exist, and there’s not a lot we can do about it as mere mortals. As much as that pisses me off on occasion.

So how do you make a reasonable, attainable goal? That’s something you have to learn over time, since your rate of improvement is going to be different from mine. We’ve all got different walls we have to get past, different challenges when it comes to getting this thing done.

What I can suggest is start slow. Give yourself a short-term goal that isn’t too far ahead of where you are currently. If you hit that goal easily and early, crank it up next time. Keep doing that until you figure out what amounts to challenging, but not impossible.

They can’t be too easy, either
You might as well just pat yourself on the ass and have done with it, really.

Have more than one goal, with different time spans
I like having a bunch of short term goals, where I set a new one as soon as I knock the previous one down. But I also like having a long-term goal. For running, my current long-term goal is to run a 5k, because how cool would that be?

Short term goals normally last a week or two, and I tend to go for distance – I want to run four miles three times a week, for example. Short term goals should be things that ratchet up slowly, each one just a little tougher than the last. And ultimately, all those short term goals should add up to get you to your long term goal.

Reward yourself
Mostly, it should just be the warm feeling of ‘fuck yeah’ when you hit a goal and get to set a new one. Because that means you’re working hard and getting somewhere. But I also think that when you hit some kind of milestone, or hit a major goal, you should reward yourself.

The reward is up to you. You know what kind of treat will motivate you to keep pushing even when your muscles are burning and you just want to lay down under a tree and die. Make it a fun thing that you normally don’t get to do, a break in your routine. Go see a movie, pick up some new running music, or get that video game you’ve been needing an excuse to buy. Heck, go to the pet store and look at the kittens if that’s enough to keep you going. The last major goal I hit, I bought a Kinect for the Xbox so I could play dance games.

Two things I’d add:
1) Don’t reward yourself with time off. You want this to be a routine, and it should also be fun. Hitting a goal so you can have a day off of doing this awful, agonizing thing probably means you need to find something more fun to do.

2) Personally, I prefer not to make food into a reward. I’ve already got an unhealthy enough relationship with what I eat. I’ve been trying to make food into a normal thing, not an obsession, and promising myself a chocolate bar or ice cream really doesn’t help that. If you don’t have my food issues, though, and having a pint of Americone Dream waiting for you at the end of a major run keeps you going, more power to you.

Make like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
Once you’ve hit a certain point of Fit Fat Nerdness that’s currently beyond where I’m at, you can probably chuck this one out of the window if you want. But generally for running (or bike rides) I like to pick either a set time or a set distance to make, not both. I don’t like picking a hard number for how fast I have to be, since that can mean pushing yourself a lot harder than you necessarily should. Be as fast as you are and call it good.

By preference, I like setting distance goals and just letting the time be whatever it’s going to be. Rest assured, as you hit the same distance over and over again, you will eventually get faster.

For goodness sake, don’t make it a weight
There is a lot I could say about the entire weight issue in terms of fitness, and even more in terms of diet. And I plan to, at length, some day soon once my rantypants get back from the cleaners. Considering I’m already 900 words into this, I’m going to keep it simple here.

1) You should be doing this because you want to be fit. That is not the same thing as your weight equaling a particular number. Ever. Full stop. Done. Discussion over.

2) If you are losing weight – and it’s honestly likely you will if you go from being a couch surfer to someone that partakes in regular exercise – your weight loss will not be constant, or predictable. For the first 10% or so of your body weight it’ll likely fall away pretty fast. After that, it gets a lot more squirrely, and trying to set your sights on an unpredictable number that changes throughout the day is the path to madness.

3) Your actual weight is not going to say anything about how much you’ve progressed as a runner, biker, or whatever. Being able to, say, hit five miles without stopping will.

4) When you miss a goal, you should shrug, maybe frown a little, and move on, ready to try again. If you’re concerned enough about your weight that you’re even thinking making goals about it, I sincerely doubt that missing a weight goal will be something you can just shrug over and go on with your day. I’ve been there. It’s crushing, depressing, and a lot of other very unhappy verbs. This is supposed to be fun, not a way for you to destroy your own self esteem.

The most important thing: Don’t torture yourself
Because hey kids, torture isn’t fun. All of this is supposed to ultimately help you. So if you’re the type that gets down about goals when you miss them, toss all this advice out the window and move on to something more useful.

Consider it a corollary to Wheaton’s Law: Don’t be a dick. That also means don’t be a dick to yourself.

Hi, I’m Rachael. I’m a fat nerd. I also run 3-4 miles a day and have done kung fu for eight years. I’m not writing this because I want to be some kind of fitness guru. Hell no, that would be ridiculous. I’m writing this because I’ve got a lot of friends that struggle with the [metaphorical] Fitness Demon and I’m hoping my experience might make things a little easier for them. I’m also writing this because it’s a lot of stuff I wish someone had told me, back when I was making attempt after unsuccessful attempt to get into this exercise thing. If it helps you out, great.

This is a topic that’s caused a lot of digital ink to be spilled on the internet. A lot. I’m not in this to start up an argument. As always, I’m just going to throw out there what works for me and hope you can gain something useful from it.

I will say one thing, though, particularly when the debate hits the shoes versus barefoot issue. I haven’t really seen a convincing argument either way. I haven’t done a pubmed search recently, but when I last did, I wasn’t feeling all that compelled. If you google the topic, there’s also a lot of anecdotes. Athelete A always ran barefoot until an injury happened and then had to wear shoes. Awesome Athlete B wears shoes even when asleep. Person F tried running barefoot and then GOT CANCER AND DIED.

Okay, you probably won’t find all of those. Maybe. But you see where I’m going with this?

Unless you are Athlete A, B, or Person F, these stories don’t necessarily mean anything. Once again, I’m back to my old refrain of you have to find what works for you. Your feet are probably different from mine, and you’ve probably got a different running gait. You probably also have different feet from Athletes A and B, and so on.

If running barefoot works for you, great! If you’re like me and you have to wear fancy running shoes so your knees don’t explode and shower innocent passers by with fragments of cartilage, also great!

Personally…

You should probably understand where I’m coming from on the shoe issue. I had severe problems with my knees for several years, which come back to the fact that I have very weak arches that collapse. I have to wear shoes with a lot of arch support, and expensive insoles. That change in my footwear, plus a lot of physical therapy fixed my knee problems.

I also have an old weightlifting injury that’s messed up my right hip, which means my right leg gets rotated outward when I walk or run. That has the effect of making me limp depending on how I run. I changed my gait so that I’m now a “forefoot striker,” which means that I run on the balls of my feet and my heels never touch down. That’s actually fixed my limp.

So that’s where I’m coming from.

Shoe Shopping

I would rather shop for shoes than eat ants, but it’s kind of a near thing. I don’t enjoy shopping in general, and when it involves anything I put on my body, it’s even less pleasant.

That said, too bad. I learned the hard way that for me, shoes are important if I don’t want to destroy my joints.

My shoes for kung fu, I just get at normal shoe stores. For running shoes, particularly if you’re just trying to get into it, I really recommend going to a store that actually specializes. What you’re looking for are:
a) Treadmills, preferably with TVs nearby so they can record you run and show it to you.
b) Salespeople that don’t get paid on commission

I think it’s worth being willing to shell out a little more for a pair of good running shoes than your average cross trainers that you just wear around wherever. But point B is important because running shoes can get ridiculously expensive, and if you’re only doing 10 miles a week you’re not going to need some top of the line solid gold shoe that comes with its own mini jetpack. It’s best if the clerk you’re going to work with isn’t going to push you for something more expensive than you need.

I get my running shoes at Boulder Running Company. If you live in Colorado, I recommend them. One thing that impressed me is that the first time I went to their store to buy a pair of shoes, the clerk had me take off my shoes and socks and stand so he could get a look at my feet. It was exactly the same routine I’d gone through with my physical therapist a few months before.

Once you get a pair of shoes to try on, you should get to run on a treadmill, and even run outside. This is important. Shoes feel different between walking and running. Something that feels great to walk in may not be nearly as good for running. It’s even better if they can actually record a video your feet while you run and then play it back in slow motion. This was how I discovered the source of my gait problem with my right leg.

The other reason it’s important to trot around at least a little in a potential pair of shoes is that they should be comfortable out of the box. I think we’re all used to the idea of needing to “break shoes in.” What this really means is that the shoes don’t fit you right. Yes, you don’t want to buy a new pair of shoes and immediately go run a 5k in them, but they should feel good enough out of the box that you could put in a couple of miles and feel good about it.

It’s this search for shoes that are comfortable out of the box that takes the most time. My first pair of decent running shoes took a solid hour of trying pairs on and swapping them around. After that, it gets easier because you can just take your defunct shoes in, brandish the carcass at the clerk, and ask for something similar.

Also, you need to make peace with the fact that you’re going to have to go through the shopping and expense relatively often. With running shoes, it’s not the years, it’s the mileage. Normally the clerk can tell you about how many miles you should expect a shoe to be good for before it starts breaking down. My new ones? About 500 miles. So if I keep up with my current running regimen, they’ll last a little less than a year.

I do have several friends who run barefoot, or run using what are basically foot gloves like these Vibrams since it’s the next best thing to running without shoes and means you’re not going to get cut by broken glass. One of my friends doesn’t even run in those – he just wears them everywhere in place of sneakers. So if that’s of interest to you, explore the possibility.

I would just encourage you to not become too wedded to any single idea until you’ve found what does work for you. Barefoot running might sound great, but if you start having problems with your heels, you may have to reexamine how to make things work. Those nice running shoes you just bought might be putting too much lateral force on your ankles and setting you up for an injury. If your shoes are hurting you, get rid of them.

My Shoes, because I know you totally care

I don’t expect this to be nearly as useful as talking about the art of shoe shopping, but I thought I should throw these in here in case there’s something useful to be gleaned.

For kung fu, it’s taken me eight years to find a pair of shoes that I actually really like. A lot of guys at my school actually wear Sambas, which I tried out but found the arch to be way too high. The Puma Ligas were perfect for my foot type, and the insole peels out easily so it can be replaced. People at my school also wear normal cross trainers and skater shoes. Almost no one wears “martial arts” shoes.

I think the best thing about the Ligas is the sole. I wore cross trainers for a long time in kung fu and particularly when I started getting in to spinning/flying kicks, I noticed the really textured soles made it harder to turn. And when I did turn, I could feel it put more lateral pressure on my knees, which is not a thing I like. Additionally, it started ripping pieces off the soles of my shoes, which made them a lot less comfortable. These have enough texture that they’re not dangerous to walk in, but they feel really nice for martial arts.

Actually, I like Ligas so much at this point that they’re the shoe I wear for my every day life. The only bad thing about them is that the sole is thin and doesn’t have much padding. So when you step on a rock, boy do you feel it. And cold goes through them in nothing flat, so they’re not great for winter wear.

These are the new running shoes I just picked up. I had a pair of New Balance before, and these are the closest equivalent to them. I’m not going to shill for NB as a brand, because everything fits pretty differently. Mostly, you’ll just notice these have some pretty heavy duty support in the forefoot, which is what I needed. This one also has less rigid support on the arch – just a little less – because the wear patterns on my old shoes showed I was getting pushed to the outside a little by that.

My insoles. I use blue-flavored superfeet because that’s what my physical therapist told me to do, and I would walk over hot coals for that woman. Are they better than any other insoles? No idea. I would say they’re definitely more supportive than the ones that come with shoes. I’d never go back. Do you need them? It depends on you and your feet.

This pair is pretty old – you can tell from the nasty sweat-stained footprint that I’ve driven into the foam. However, they’re still okay to use since the plastic isn’t cracked and I haven’t actually worn through anything yet. Which means they’ve outlasted the pair of shoes they were once in. So even if they are relatively expensive, you don’t have to replace them too often.

Hi, I’m Rachael. I’m a fat nerd. I also run 3-4 miles a day and have done kung fu for eight years. I’m not writing this because I want to be some kind of fitness guru. Hell no, that would be ridiculous. I’m writing this because I’ve got a lot of friends that struggle with the [metaphorical] Fitness Demon and I’m hoping my experience might make things a little easier for them. I’m also writing this because it’s a lot of stuff I wish someone had told me, back when I was making attempt after unsuccessful attempt to get into this exercise thing. If it helps you out, great.

There are several things you need to do before you get started on the whole exercise thing, my fellow fat nerds. Make sure you have good shoes (more on this later). If you’re of the female fat nerd persuasion, get some good sports bras. Invest in a tiny mp3 player if you like music. Things like that. But here’s one you probably haven’t thought about:

Get a new doctor.

Well, let me back off that blanket statement a little. Your doctor might be perfectly fine. Your doctor might be wonderful, one you’ve had for years and years, one that listens to you and works with you. If you’re lucky that way, good for you. Don’t just keep that doctor, declare it Awesome Doctor Appreciation Day and make him or her a pie.

But most of us? Need a new doctor. It’s a giant pain in the ass, depending upon your insurance company. Your options might be severely limited. But it’s worth it to explore those options.

Let me tell you a story.

Back in 2005, I was unemployed. My job hunt was becoming so desperate that I seriously considered joining the Army as a viable career path. That didn’t end up panning out, but one thing the Army recruiters did that I will owe them on for the rest of my life is they taught me how to run. So even when I gave up on the Army thing, I kept running.

Somewhere in there, I started developing these awful, sharp, shooting pains in my knees when I ran.

Now, I hate going to the doctor. I hate the feeling that I’m being a whiner, if nothing else. I’m much more of the suck it up, Cupcake school of pain management. So if I’m willing to actually make an appointment and go, that should tell you just how much pain I have to be in. Enough pain that mainlining Advil doesn’t cut it. Enough pain that I’m actually starting to worry about my bodily integrity.

So after months of increasing knee pain, I finally went to the doctor.

You know what the doctor told me? Your knees hurt because you’re fat. Lose 15 pounds and they won’t hurt so much.

Never mind that my knees hurt because I was exercising, and at that point I had already dropped 20 pounds. Never mind that the pain was so severe on some days that it was interfering with my ability to exercise and thus continue to lose weight. I just needed to lose more weight, and things would magically become better.

I kept going with running and kung fu and did my best to just ignore the increasing amounts of pain, because I told myself it was all a weight issue. The pain in my knees got bad enough that I started having problems with stairs. At that point, I considered going to the doctor again, but I knew that she’d just tell me I was still too fat. I didn’t see a point in coughing up a copay so my doctor could make me feel like shit about myself.

A few years after the original diagnosis of being too fat, my right knee locked up and I fell down the stairs. My significant other convinced me to try going to the doctor again.

Due to the strange vagaries of being in an HMO, I ended up seeing a different doctor.

She listened to me explain my knee pain, about how much exercise I was getting per week. She actually believed that I was that physically active, in spite of my weight. She messed with my knees a bit and then told me that “A lot of female athletes have this type of knee pain…” Yes. She used the word athlete. And then she referred me to a physical therapist.

It took the physical therapist all of five minutes to diagnose my problem (I have an old injury in my right hip that screws up my leg alignment, plus arches that collapse), tell me to get special insoles for all my shoes, and give me a set of exercises to do.

So that was great. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. I had to take two years off of both running and kung fu while I let the physical therapy do its work. My knees are better now, but they will never be good.

And a lot of that is because I had a doctor who didn’t want to look further than my weight.

There are a lot of doctors out there like that. And that’s a problem. I avoided going to my former doctor a lot of times when I shouldn’t have because I didn’t want to get a lecture about how I needed to lose weight. I knew that I was overweight, and I was trying to do something about it. When I did have a problem severe enough to make me go, it was blamed on my weight if there was even a tenuous connection that could be made.

If you’re serious about physical activity, if you find a way to exercise that you enjoy and do a lot, you are going to end up needing to see a doctor. You’ll screw up your ankle, or mess up your knee, or pull a muscle. It’s going to happen. Life in general is hard on our bodies, and if we live it large and have fun, injury is almost inevitable. And that should be fine.

You need a doctor that you can trust to actually listen to you when there is a problem, someone who will help you fix the problem instead of just telling you to lose weight and call it a day.

Hell, even if you’re not going to turn into a fitness fiend, you deserve a doctor that will listen to you. This is not to say that we are completely divorced from our weight. There are some health problems we fat nerds can end up with that are related to our level of fat. But our health is also so much more than just our weight.

And so are we.

Ever try to go to bed without brushing your teeth? I just can’t do it. Some kind of awful little plaque alarm in the back of my head starts going off and refuses to stop until I’ve done something, even if it’s just smearing some toothpaste around in my mouth with one finger. Part of this could be because I’m absolutely terrified of the dentist and will do anything it takes, up to and including ritual animal sacrifice (no, not really) to guarantee that I will never have a cavity again.

The bigger root of my tooth brushing obsession is probably just the fact that it’s been a nightly routine almost as long as I can remember. Routine plus desperate desire to fight tooth decay wins, apparently.

I bring this up because we’re animals, and animals like routines. I’d like to think I’m slightly less neurotic than my cats when I miss giving them their morning treat and idiot talk, but I’m still a slave to my daily habits. This is a fact I’ve tried to turn to my advantage for exercise.

I also admit that I had a lot of help getting it going, in the form of severe jetlag.

I was in Germany for almost three weeks. My first night there I managed (somehow) to stay awake until about 9 PM, at which point I collapsed like a badly made souffle. The next morning, I woke up at 5 AM entirely on my own. I’d already discovered that there was no gym in the hotel I could use, so running was my only option. And I also realized that I probably wasn’t going to feel like running after working for ten hours. So I warmed up, put on my running shoes, and went for a 30 minute run along the banks of the Weser in the pre-dawn dark.

Same thing the next day. And the next. And at that point, I was on a real streak and it seemed a shame to break that, so the next and the next day…

For those three weeks, I was able to break out of my habitual pattern of staying up late, and I got used to getting up every morning and going for a run before breakfast. There were a couple of days when it was too cold to run outside, but I still got up, stretched, and did the few exercises I could do in my hotel room.

By the time I got back home, I couldn’t not get up and do something. Despite the fact that the return to high altitude just screwed my lungs for the first week.

Because this is the thing. For all I talked about finding some sport/fitness activity/game/etc to do that you think is fun and awesome, almost nothing is fun and awesome 100% of the time. There are always, always going to be times when you just don’t feel like it, and you need to be able to make yourself do it anyway. Making the exercise routine really helps in that fight against your own inertia. If you get up at x time and do y every day, you’ve got one more weapon to fight your own excuses: “Yeah, I’m tired, but it’s 8AM and that’s when I run.”

Trying to get into a routine sucks, I’m not going to lie. If you’re me, about five days in you’ll be questioning your own sanity and wondering why you wanted to do this so badly anyway. After the first two weeks, it starts getting easier. But this is your brain trying to lull you into a false sense of security, to convince you that it’s okay, just take a day off and sleep late. Don’t trust it. Unless you are physically incapable of doing your routine, do it. After three weeks, you’ve built the foundation for severe psychological discomfort if you stop doing your routine. But don’t even give yourself a break then. The whole point is that you keep pushing yourself until every time you think, “Don’t wanna,” the thought is immediately followed by, “But that’s what I do. So… yeah.”

How exactly you want to build your routine is really up to you. I used to just do evenings. This getting up in the morning and exercising is a very new thing for me, and I don’t think I could have managed it without a healthy helping of jetlag to get me going. But this is what you do:
– Pick your exercise.
– Do it every day at approximately the same time. Even on weekends.
– Don’t stop.
– I mean it.
– I don’t care if the bed is warm and your cat is purring.

I will add a caution, though, to the every day plan. Particularly when you’re starting out, trying to go hell bent for leather every day is honestly not a good idea. It’s rough on your body. You will need to take a day off from your activity of choice every few days to let your muscles recover. That’s perfectly okay, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But taking a day off shouldn’t mean sleeping through your exercise time or using it to watch reruns of Castle. It’s still your exercise time, so do something with it. Take a walk. Play Dance Central. Or at least stretch while you’re watching your Castle reruns.

Because there will be times when you genuinely cannot exercise, for a multitude of reasons, and possibly even for an extended period of time. Etching this routine into your brain so that it can never be removed will help you pick things back up afterward.

I also understand that for a variety of reasons, you may not be able to do an every day at the same time routine. Maybe you have a weird work schedule, or classes screw with you, or whatever. Routine building still works when it’s not every day.

I had a routine before Germany as well. I went to kung fu on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday (and I ran on Thursday and Saturday). Even when I didn’t feel like it, I made myself go to kung fu because I knew I would broil alive in my own neurotic wibbling if I didn’t. Unfortunately, that particular routine got destroyed by a shoulder injury in November. I was struggling to keep going with exercise, and then Germany came along and that put me back on track.

I will say one thing, comparing the two routines. It’s easier to stick with one that is every day as opposed to just on set days of the week. But sometimes it doesn’t work out that way and you have to do what you can.

If your schedule is so random and awful that you can’t put together any kind of routine at all, you’ve got it the toughest out of anyone. That means that when you are fighting your own inertia to try to exercise, all you’ve got is ‘do it’ without the added push of habit. It can be done, though. I believe in you.

But if you’re in the latter situation – and please, don’t think I’m judging you because I have no idea what your life is like – before you tell yourself that you just can’t have a routine at all, take a good hard look at things. If you want to do this exercise thing, you need to carve the time out of your life to do it, because it’s important. You don’t exercise when you have time, you have to make time to exercise.

If you think about it that way, maybe you can carve out time to create a routine after all.

Exercise being fun helps you get through that first month of building the routine. After that first month, then it reminds you why that was a good idea.

Hi, I’m Rachael. I’m a fat nerd. I also run 3-4 miles a day and have done kung fu for eight years. I’m not writing this because I want to be some kind of fitness guru. Hell no, that would be ridiculous. I’m writing this because I’ve got a lot of friends that struggle with the [metaphorical] Fitness Demon and I’m hoping my experience might make things a little easier for them. I’m also writing this because it’s a lot of stuff I wish someone had told me, back when I was making attempt after unsuccessful attempt to get into this exercise thing. If it helps you out, great.