Want a better life? Start by exercising
Not because you need a sixpack, not because you need to be the world’s strongest — but because it automatically triggers a chain reaction. When you get into the habit of regularly exercising as little as 3 times per week, magical things happen. There’s no magical formula what actually will happen, or when, because we are all different — but here are a few examples that I’ve personally experienced:
Healthier habits
After I got into the habit of exercising a few times every week, I automatically started changing a few other habits. Slowly, but surely. First I started eating “better food”, and eliminating some unhealthy foods. Over time, I’ve also cut down sugar as much as possible. Automatically, my interest in nutrition has grown — so I’m willing to learn and experiment with different things. When I was younger, I basically didn’t eat any greens at all. Then I started incorporating it little by little into my diet, even though it was mostly because everyone said it was healthy. I didn’t know why, so one reason for me was so I could eliminate some carbs from my diet. Over time, I learned more about what it actually does “inside us”. I’m no expert, and I’m still in the process of learning this stuff, but what I know makes it a lot more sustainable — eating for health benefits instead of cutting carbs.
I’ve managed to drop some bad habits as well — like quitting smoking, not drinking as much alcohol, etc.
Better sleep
When you exercise, you get “more exhausted” — not meaning that you walk around like a zombie the whole day, but making it easier to fall asleep because your body needs to recover. Just like I got more interested in nutrition, I got interested in all different areas that could improve my life. Sleep was one of those things. There was a time when “you can sleep in the grave” was cool, and I kind of bought into it — but not anymore. I now understand the importance of sleep, and am still in the process of trying to perfect it. It’s not just about being in bed for 7–8 hours, but the quality of the actual sleep. Everyone is different, but having the interest to try different things and see how they affect your sleep is key. Things like not eating for X hours before bed, taking a shower before going to bed, not staring at any screens for a while before bed (and if doing so, using blue light glasses), room temperature, etc.
Less stress and better mood
When you exercise, all (or most of) your stress is released. All the emotions, like stress, never build up inside you too much — so you will be able to control your emotions a lot better. We’ve all seen people that start screaming at something or someone out of nowhere for no reason, they have too much built-up stress/anger/whatever inside them and need to let it out. That won’t be you.
Increased productivity
Building on top of the last point, when you regularly get those stress releases, you are automatically more focused. If you don’t usually schedule or structure your day, you might need to in order to be able to fit the workout into your day. And when you have structure, you get more things done. Personally, I’m a lot more productive and effective if I have a full schedule. Then I need to be efficient in order to get things done. Most of us know this from school, when we got an assignment that we had one week to turn in, and always turned it in just before the deadline — even if we knew the whole time it would only take a couple of hours to complete. We get lazy without structure and too much time.
When we’ve been sticking to the workout routine for a while and start seeing how it impacts our life — we get curious about what else we can achieve if we apply the same structure to something else. We notice how powerful the habit of staying consistent is.
