How to Love Exercise

With food, you can kind of kid yourself: the skinny girl margarita, the ‘pasta’ that’s actually quinoa, the brownie made chiefly of butternut purée (that you can’t even taste!). With exercise, however, there’s no subterfuge; your muscles just aren’t the suckers your taste buds are. That’s why starting a fitness program, or even just intensifying an existing one, can feel like an uphill battle. But here’s some good news: even if you can’t exactly trick your body into working out, top trainers have some surprisingly practical ways to set yourself in motion – and to (almost) effortlessly ramp up your kilojoule burn once you’re there. Here are some ways to make exercise easier and more productive.

Motivate

Quit whining Gwyneth Paltrow has called her trainer, Tracy Anderson, an “organic plastic surgeon”. But in lieu of a scalpel, she wields a razor-sharp tongue. “Instead of thinking about your problem areas, how you’re ageing, or how you can’t eat everything you did when you were 19, you need to accept that you have to exercise six days a week to see results,” says Tracy.

Go for a good mood “I don’t always wake up dying to work out,” admits trainer Valerie Waters, creator of the I Want My Bikini Body exercise programme. “But it helps to think, ‘I am one workout away from a good mood’. Getting up and out the door makes you feel better.”

Make gym friends Stop treating the gym like a haunted house you scurry through as quickly as you can. It helps to have friends there, says Laurie Cole, a gym instructor. “Part of the reason you go to your favorite hairstylist is for the human connection. Tap into that camaraderie with exercise – the teacher you love, participants you’ve gotten to know. It’s a way to reconnect with real, live people.”

Count the minutes Each week you aim for three hour-long workouts, and each week your schedule sends you a two-letter response: ha! If you aim to exercise for a total of 180 minutes, however, it seems more flexible and you’re more likely to count the incidental exercise, like the 10-minute skipping rope session you squeezed in before work or that 20-minute brisk walk when you were late to meet a friend, says Lauren Slayton, nutritionist and founder of foodtrainers.com. Tracking your movements is as easy as using your iPhone or iPod Touch to download an app like Walk n’ Play.

Skip Real Housewives How many hours of Housewives do you rack up in a week? If you ‘don’t have time to exercise’, you might have found it right there. And watching less TV has been shown to increase weekly kilojoule burn, according to a recent study that actually locked grown women away from their televisions.

Go public “I’ve seen many a reluctant exerciser change their lives by blogging,” says Valeria. Document a dream quest – 30 yoga classes in 30 days, running your first 10km – and you’ll have enough reason to exercise: new content! “Personal challenges are great motivators. It’s like every woman’s version of six weeks to looking red carpet-ready.”

Stay home “Exercise becomes more convenient when you don’t have to waste time packing a gym bag,” says Tracy. Get some podcasts or DVDs (that you’ll use for something other than coasters) and just do it.

Be the DJ “Music is incredibly powerful,” says Tracy. “It blocks out all the other noise in your head, anything that would make you stop exercising.” Get in the habit of buying new songs and creating playlists, and when your songs grow stale; try mash-ups or remixes.

Inspire the office When colleagues set collective exercise goals, they not only increase their physical activity by 20% in six weeks, but they were also able to maintain it over 12 weeks, according to a study in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine.
Think of your feet “Exercise designed to improve balance and coordination will strengthen the core and improve posture,” says trainer Ken Soy. “As a result, wearing heels can actually become more comfortable.”

Make the most of it

No rest for the wicked… or fit Patting yourself on the back shouldn’t be the most challenging exercise on your gym set list. “The formula for results is that the muscles should be working for 20-70 seconds,” says trainer David Barton. “The rest between sets should be a minute or 75 seconds” – not a trip back to the changing room to adjust your ponytail.

Get a little uncomfortable “Being outside of your comfort zone is where the work happens”, Laurie says. This may mean relinquishing the rights to claim to ‘your’ bike at the gym – which you most likely favor because it’s easier.

Take the ‘rut’ out of ‘routine’ You don’t think anyone could be more bored with your workout than you are, but guess what? Your muscles are phoning it in, too. To change your body, says trainer Harley Pasternak, you need to keep changing what you’re doing – the order, the weight, the number of reps. “I’ve never done the same butt lift twice,” adds Tracy.

Have coffee On any day, a hot cup of coffee is the ultimate way to get your grey matter in gear. But guess what: it’s not just a boost for your brain. Caffeine has repeatedly been shown to improve aerobic performance, so start up that coffee machine to kickstart you entire system. (Beware of highly caffeinated energy drinks, though, which are loaded with sugar and kilojoules.)

Undo the damage done by your desk Your workstation feels like such a medieval instrument of torture, you’ll try anything to make your neck and back stop hurting (including that three-month period when you substituted a beach ball for an office chair). That’s reason alone to hit the gym: according to a recent Danish study, resistance training works wonders for a desk-ravaged body – especially the neck and upper back.

Have a plan “Do not get to the gym and then decide what you’re going to do,” says Harley, since it often leads to the same-old. Instead, figure out a weekly schedule that works different body parts on different days. “Focus on just a few muscles each day,” suggests Harley, whose signature workouts last 25 minutes and focus on one upper-body part, one lower-body part, and one abdominal section (chest, thighs and sides, for example).

Jump right in You don’t have to be Usain Bolt, but starting with an all-over exercise (like running, skipping or the Pilates 100) can kick you into gear. “A five-minute cardio warm up helps reduce injury and perhaps you for the rest of your workout,” explains Harley.

Race yourself If you do end up running or cycling the same route more than once, change the intensity of your workouts to get more out of them. Even better, time each session (you can use the stopwatch on your cell phone or iPod) and find out if you can beat your own record. “If a certain segment of a hike took me nine minutes last time,” Valerie says, “then I strive to be in the eights this time.”
Or race someone else Of course, no one wants to admit it, but you get a certain amount of satisfaction – and a better workout – when you plonk yourself down on a spinning bike or treadmill and make a point of casually outdoing the person next to you.

Maintain the gain

Burn it up After a vigorous workout, test subjects burnt nearly 40% more kilojoules throughout the day than when they hadn’t exercised at all, according to a study at Appalachian State University. Which isn’t an excuse to devour everything that’s not nailed down.

Exercise on empty, fill up shortly after “A lot of people try to prolong that virtuous feeling by not eating,” says David. Instead, he recommends working out on an empty stomach (if you’re workout is less than an hour) and eating afterwards, when glucose is more likely to head to muscle cells rather than fat,

Make it a habit You don’t spend months building a house only to set a match to it the moment it’s done. And yet that’s what many women do when they’ve met their weight goals. “I’ve seen this again and again. People put half a year into it and then start eating whatever they want, and everything takes a month to unravel,” says Tracy. “Remember all the work you did. And know that when you take a week off to go on holiday, the mountain is going to be lighter when you get back.” Keep up the regular effort, though, and the weight will stay off: women who did an hour a day of moderate exercise (such as brisk walking) successfully maintained their weight, according to the long-term study reported in the Journal of the American Association.