How do you make staying healthy enjoyable and a part of your lifestyle?

I’m a hedonist at heart and have to work very hard to curtail my gluttonous impulses. I am a gregarious type with a propensity to inhale the world. If something is good just kill me with it. Good thing I never tried Heroin. lol
I try to behave myself and then splurge on the weekends most of the time.

A few beers, wine, pizza, mexican food, maybe a little herbal brownie on occasion. As far as exercise I HATE routinized exercise and while I have gone through periods in my life where I was committed to a regular walking/jogging exercise routine and have logged thousands of miles on trail with my horses over the years I am not a gym kinda gal and prefer to get my exercise from my daily rural living routine. I live on a 10 acre horse property with 3 horses, 2 burros, ducks, geese and chickens. By 9 a.m. this morning I have already tromped all over this mini-ranch, fed horses, cleaned stalls, and am about to go pitch out about 150 lbs. of wet hay from the bird barn before the next wave of a big storm hits this afternoon. I still ride horses and am not doing too bad for a 56 year old hippie cowgirl.

I also ranch sit on a regular basis and care for 11 more horses on a neighboring property so I manage to keep on trottin’ along and am not an old gray mare, yet anyway.
I do have my aches and pains but nothing a little Advil or a bit of herbal essence can’t cure.You want to stay fit and healthy buy a ranch and get horses. haha

I changed my eating habits in 1987. Never looked back. It’s not anything I have to constantly work at any more. It’s just what I do. I have learned prefer to eat foods that are reasonably healthy and not junky. I eat the hell out of breads, too.

You’re on the right track when you talk about making a total life style change, so don’t make any changes that you really can’t sustain for the rest of your life. You cut out carbs? Good, I guess. Whatever trips your trigger. But can you do that for the rest of your life?

If your goal is just to stay healthy and active, then pick an activity you enjoy and try to do it at least three times a week. For me, it’s martial arts. For you, it might be basketball or biking or something else entirely. Regardless, you don’t need to go to the gym every day unless you have a specific goal that requires the sort of equipment a gym provides. (And even people who do have that sort of goal don’t need to go every single day. Rest days are important for letting your body recover.)

Another think to keep in mind is that exercise is not the way to lose weight. It can contribute in small ways, but is much easier to not consume calories in the first place than it is to burn them off. That said, psychological factors can influence how easy it is for you to commit to a diet change. It seems like you are experiencing some pretty good success, so good for you. But if you find yourself plateauing for more than two or three months, I would recommend looking into Seth Roberts’ so-called “Shangri-La diet.” I’ve seen it help people more than once.

Find an exercise that you enjoy, especially if it gets you outside. Running, cycling, walking, all are good and invigorating, the kind of thing that you can do to the point where youd day feels incomplete without it.

And, as you pointed out, diets are not good because they are temporary. I cut out almost all carbs, except very complex ones, because I was getting pre diabetic. It was difficult at first, but once they are gone for a week or two, the cravings for them stop and you won’t miss
them.

Best of luck to you!

I don’t do that which is not enjoyable so I don’t find this to be a hard task. I like healthy food so that’s not a problem. I’m generally active but do not “exercise” very often. I’m quite healthy.

You find an activity that you thorougly enjoy. Think about it. Team sports? That can be done even indoors in bad weather. Horseback riding. Scuba. Dancing. Yoga. Swimming. Sailing. Kayaking. Canoeing. Tour biking. Camping trips incorporating all the above. Hang gliding. Parachuting. Parasailing! Do something you really like. If it is a little costly, drop an unnecessary expense, or a bad habit and go for it—two birds with one stone. You might even find yourself working out in the gym in order to be better at the thing you love. That is what happened to me.

My 82 yr old mom just confided in my that her and my dad would play golf 5 times a week, They would bet $1.00 for the winner of the front nine and a dollar for the winner of the back nine and the golfer who had the best handicap score at the end of the match got to be on top.

She said that was the golden rule up until he died at 79 years old…God Bless you mom and dad!

Humans were MEANT to be active and healthy. What you need to do is rewire your brain from all the programming… Humans were meant to be active and not live sedentary lifestyles. The human body also doesn’t need a lot of food to survive/thrive, contrary to popular belief. This is why so many people are fat. As soon as you feel full STOP eating. Eat less processed foods and meat. Eat more veggies, fruit, go out in the sun, you’ll be fine.

You need to rewire and reprogram your mind that you believe exercising isn’t fun…. and that you have to force yourself to do it or see it as a chore….. Do something everyday and change your habits and the way you think/feel about it….. As soon as you do that, it will be easy and you wouldn’t even have to “think” about doing it…......

Because your body AND mind already knows….. So stop thinking about it and just do it. When you feel lazy and can’t push yourself just do a little more. Your body and mind are there to HELP you not punish you.

@LaLaLove Easier said than done for many. I am not a routinized type of personality and being a fan of personality theory everyone has a custom blend of traits that highly influence their preferences in all areas of life.
I despise routine exercise or boring task work and prefer to get my exercise from outdoor activities I enjoy. There is no one size fits all formula and it is also a damaging stereotype to equate an overweight person with being “lazy.”

I agree, everyone has to find their own balance but I will never be like one of my friends that puts 5 miles a day on her eliptical and then goes walking for another 30 minutes. Gah…how incredibly boring. haha

I run 6 miles every day, work out with weights & do sit ups/push ups & eat sensibly.
The way to enjoy it is to not see it as a means to an end, just do it & the results will follow.

If you like dogs, I would consider getting one. Research has shown that people who own dogs walk more than others

“A 10-month prospective study was carried out which examined changes in behaviour and health status in 71 adult subjects following the acquisition of a new pet (either dogs or cats). A
group of 26 subjects without pets served as a comparison over the same period. Both pet-owning groups reported a highly significant reduction in minor health problems during the
first month following pet acquisition, and this effect was sustained in dog owners through to
10 months. The pet-acquiring groups also showed improvements in their scores on the
30-item General Health Questionnaire over the first 6 months and, in dog owners, this improvement was maintained until 10 months. In addition, dog owners took considerably more
physical exercise while walking their dogs than the other two groups, and this effect continued
throughout the period of study.”

I love to dance so I do Zumba every week. I also like to swim so I sometimes do laps or water aerobics. I try to do a touristy type think at least once a month if not more. Today I dragged my husband’s family out to see the local St. Patrick’s day parade. Walking round trip from where we parked the car to wherever watched the parade was almost a three mile walk.

I walk around the neighborhood once in a while. I like it when my husband joins me.

I just started eating better again. I really was eating horribly. I’m staying with my inlaws and my MIL fries a lot of the food she makes and there is ALWAYS cookies and candy in the house. It’s incredible. Truly. I’ve never been in a house with so much crap food always available. She does always cook from scratch, so I give her credit for that.

I use the local public pool for both exercise and enjoyment/relaxation. I do sometimes need to concentrate on eating a better diet. That one is hard.

Really the key is to find the activities you want to do that will leave you fit and healthy as a side effect. Bicycling is that thing for me.

Anything that you do consistently becomes a habit, and therefore becomes enjoyable. I’ve never been a jogger Thanks boobs but I hear that once you’re into it you start getting cranky if, for some reason, you can’t jog.