I’ve sat down to write this post with a cup of tea in hand – none other than green tea. If my facial expressions were any indication of my enjoyment of this tea you would assume instead that I must have just smelt poo as my face has is puckered up due to the lingering after taste on the back of my tongue.
It’s safe to say I’m no fan of the flavor, and in all honesty I REALLY don’t like green tea, but I drink about 2-3 cups a day.
It’s not that I don’t like a bitter taste, in fact I only ever drink my tea and coffee black and sugar free…this way I get the real flavor. (Die hard here!)
You may ask why I drink green tea if I dislike it so much? I drink it because it’s good for me, it’s full of antioxidants and anti-aging nutrients so I tolerate the flavor in hopes of infinite health and beauty!
Is Exercise Your Green Tea?
The reason why I’m sharing with you my love/hate relationship with green tea is because it shares a similar parallel to exercise and certain individuals utter dislike of it.
I personally love exercise, I need it as it keeps my head clear and my stress levels at a decent level. I can’t understand how anyone doesn’t like it, but I guess I would have to agree that much like green tea – exercise just isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
In my mind exercise is one of those things that isn’t negotiable. Society today is uber modern making certain things way to easy for us, everything is convenient which is only making us even more lazy by the day. I’m not suggesting I would ever want to go back to the dark ages but they did have a few perks as exercise was a daily task. There were no grocery shops where we could just buy our dinner…much less ready meals. You had to work hard to farm, beg, borrow, or steal, in order to have any food at all.
Likes and dislikes aside we don’t always get to choose what we like and eliminate what we don’t like, we have to make a compromise here for the better. If it’s good for us we have to make the effort to get out of our comfort zone and try tolerating it.
How to Start Exercising When You Don’t Want to – But Need to!
I’m using exercise as an example here but the same rule could apply to healthy eating, or just about anything you know you need to do because it’s good for you but don’t want to.
Identify why you need to exercise – It’s always a good idea to identify why you need to do something this way you have an incentive. Are you experiencing any symptoms such as a bad back? Tight neck? Overweight? High blood pressure? Stressed out? Feeling overwhelmed? Insomnia? Incontinence? These are just a few obvious signals your body is sending you to tell you to get up and exercise. Unfortunately most of us wait for these symptoms before we realize we need to get up and do something about it. But it’s never too late to start.
Start small/consistent – I know I always go on and on about how doing just 20 minutes of exercise a day is better than doing nothing. It is something I firmly believe in. I hardly see the point of doing an intense 2 hours of exercise just once a week. I believe it’s much better to train the mind and body to do even just 5 minutes every single day. The body loves consistency.
Be specific – You may or may not find this part useful, but I sometimes like to have a target goal. That mummy tummy that never seems to go away is my current target! Yup, bikini season is coming up! (more on that to come in a future post!) So my target goal here is to do 5-10 minutes of ab work every day. I may not fit in any other exercise but each day I have to work my tum. For you it could be planking for 5 minutes every day or doing push ups, or even skip rope. Remember something each day is more effective than 2 hours once a week.
Make it fun – I love Yogi Tea, they have a cute little quote on the tag that gives me the fun factor when drinking my green tea. I can’t wait to drink one as I’m obsessed with what message I’m going to get. One of the reasons why you may dislike exercise is because you find it boring. But it doesn’t have to be if you find your “yogi tea” distraction. Find what makes you tick, it doesn’t have to be the gym, it can be anything that gets your muscles working and your heart rate bouncing. Get some music on to get you pumped, or take your workout outside in the fresh air. Maybe you just need a new pair of crazy lycra workout pants to get you in the mood and connected to your skin, your muscles, your body!
“You don’t have to be great to start. But you DO have to start to be great.”
xxx Lara
LAYALI LIFESTYLE 