How can I stay motivated?

Dear Dr. Sears,

I have an excess 37 pounds I’ve been trying to get off for several years, so I was really anticipating my PACE experience.

I did great for the first three days, but then I just sort of stopped doing it. That seems to be a problem with me when it comes to exercise… plenty of motivation up-front, then a complete loss of it once I get started. Can you give me any hints on how I can stay motivated and stick with the program?

–Jimmy B.

Dear Jimmy,

I don’t know you personally, so I’m not sure why you stopped doing PACE, but I do have a lot of experience with people doing exercise programs.

And I find that one of the reasons so many people tend to quit is because they’ve been conditioned for failure.

There are lots of programs that promise results, but they force you into restrictive diets and impossible workouts that you can’t possibly follow.

People who want to drop weight will often try over and over to do them, but those programs set you up for failure. After a few tries, instead of training your body, you’ve trained your mind to expect to fail.

Here’s what I do about that:

Follow these 4 steps, and as you do them you will overcome that conditioning for failure because you’ll learn new habits.

1. Stay positive: Forget past failures. They’re history. You’re resistant to “exercise” because modern fitness advice had conditioned you to expect hours of aerobics and slogging away on the treadmill. You dread exercise because nature doesn’t want you to exert yourself that way. “Cardio” seems unpleasant because it is.

PACE is anti-exercise. It’s a total of 12 minutes of exertion, as little as three days a week. I guarantee it won’t take long until you start seeing changes in your body. In fact, many people begin noticing results in as little as two weeks. So don’t give up before you even get started. PACE is easy to do, and you’ll have fun the whole way. When you see the results, I promise you’ll stay motivated to keep working out with PACE.

2. Exercise at the same time each day. You can vary your workout to your liking, so PACE is always exactly what you want to do. Because you’ll like it, PACE will become something you look forward to each day.

Instead of being an added chore, it quickly becomes a regular daily habit. (Hint: Many of my patients prefer mornings over evenings, and I tend to agree them. Morning exercise helps pump up your energy levels throughout the day. It’s also easier to get motivated before work than it is after a long day at the job.)

3. Do the exercises you enjoy. The great thing about PACE is that you can apply it to just about any form of exertion, so it’s never boring. Pull out the bike, jump into the pool, walk briskly through the neighborhood, sprint around the block, or do body weight and weight-bearing workouts in front of your favorite television program. All you have to do is apply the concept of PACE to whatever movement you want.

Just incrementally increase the challenge in each set of exertion, and make sure to fully recover in between, and you’ll grow stronger, fitter and leaner in a relatively short time.

4. Track your progress. Once you start doing PACE you might notice that your clothes begin getting looser, or maybe your belt has to be cinched a little tighter. That’s what you’re looking for. The object here is fat reduction, so don’t obsess over the scale.

My patients usually start noticing these changes within two weeks. The real excitement kicks in when they come into my office and find how many inches they’ve lost. Or how many pounds of body fat they’ve shed. I’ve found that measuring and tracking these changes can be a great motivator.