Make Fitness Your Bad Habit

September 28th, 2009

If I’ve learnt one single lesson about fitness it’s that there’s no one single lesson. Getting in shape is about doing a multitude of tiny things that amount to a significant lifestyle change. How many tiny things? Pick a number. I’ll guess 10,000 or so.

Trying to single out the most important of those 10,000 things is a fool’s errand. So I will simply focus on one of my favourites: making fitness addictive. In my experience, doing so has had a significantly positive impact on my exercise routines and made all the other tiny changes a little bit easier.

The Usual Attempt

Let’s take a step back and see why making fitness addictive is important. We’ll do so by looking at the usual format for a failed attempt at getting in shape:

1. You sign up for a gym membership. It takes another bite out of your income but it’s a good investment in yourself, right?
2. A pact is made with a friend. You two will exercise together consistently.
3. Obligations make you or your friend unavailable. The routine falls apart.
4. Realizing you’re still paying for a gym membership you start going solo.
5. You pack your stinky clothes in a stinky bag and put them in a stinky locker in a stinky changeroom.
6. Stuck watching a preset TV channel you exercise half-heartedly. You try to look intense since other people can see you. You also try not to sweat too much, again, since other people can see you.
7. A few months later you cancel your membership.

What fun.

The Better Option

Make whatever changes are necessary to get addicted to fitness. The ultimate goal is to make fitenss a disruptive force in your life. You shouild find yourself apologizing for being late because you got carried away doing cardio. You should put off doing other fun things because fitness is funner.

Simple it is. Easy? Not necessarily. Addiction comes from basal desires triggered in regions deep inside the brain (the nucleus accumbens in concert with other important parts). It’s this primal area that gets that oh-so-enjoyable chemical dopamine flowing. The drive to addiction is balance by an advanced part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex, located behind the forehead) which can override desire with rational thought.

Now if the power of rationality alone could get us exercising, it would. We all know the benefits of staying in shape and the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle. Being logical about the need to exercise is not enough. We’re not Spock.

In order for a normal human to want to exercise, a balanced trifecta is required: rational reasoning, primal desire, and actual action. Let’s look at how to overlook the unpleasant aspects of exercise and getting those cranial pleasure chemicals secreted.

Doing this is different for everyone. Take a step back and look at what you enjoy. What gets you hyped up? Take that and make it happen in an exercise context. Here are some examples with which I’ve seen some success:

• Entertainment: Take the time to make a playlist that begs to be air drummed or backlog a cache of laugh-out-loud comedies. Keep them in waiting for a workout. This can make an exercise session something to look forward to.
• Getting some peace and quiet: Have an oasis from others. Run solo in the park or setup an off-limits exercise room. Take in some of that aforementioned entertainment and you might not want to get off the treadmill.
• Rewards: Set a relatively big amount of money aside as a reward for achieving a fitness goal. Remind yourself of the enjoyment you’d have with that free money by posting a visual in a prominent place. In my experience, one week of income is a good reward for accomplishing an ambitious three-month goal. This means you can earn four weeks of pay each year to spend guilt free!
• Good food and company: Set aside some time and money to bike to a nearby restaurant and get a nice light meal with some friends. While I have personally never held a steady routine like this, the bicyclists at the crêperie near my home seem to be there every Sunday. They eat, laugh, and bike home. Sunday brunch makes good logistical sense too since most people are available at that time.
• Gastronomy: Find healthy foods you really like, with no compromises. They’re out there, they’re just not advertised as much as burgers and fries. I suggest looking to Middle Eastern or Asian cuisines, but the world’s the limit. Just when you think you’ve tried it all you stumble across, for example, a small Ethiopian restaurant that fits your diet perfectly. Healthy, delicious, mouthwatering food is out there. It’s hiding. Go find it.
• Exploration: There’s a familiar, childlike joy in trying something new. Go rock climbing, mountain biking, mountaineering, or just get off the beaten path. The excitement and adrenaline have always been addictive in my experience.

Here’s the caveat: make sure to reserve these pleasures for your workout. If you allow yourself to be entertained at will, you’ll chose to do it on the couch. If you setup a Sunday brunch with friends, you’ll be tempted to forgo the exercise component. Make the enjoyment and the effort a matched pair. The former should reward the latter. No exceptions.

From an neurological perspective, our behaviour towards fitness is quite understandable. The brain sends impulses to reward ourselves more often than we usually deserve. Combine that with the myriad companies profiting from our indulgences and there’s no wonder obesity and addiction are such a problem. Nevertheless, we can use our rational minds to appease our impulsive ones, particularly in fitness. Take the time to setup your life in a way that gets dopamine flowing when you exercise. This way you can be your own Pavlovian experiment in exercise enjoyment.