Making exercise and working out a part of my life has been one of the best things I’ve done. I am fortunate in that I’ve always had an interest in sports and staying active, so it bothers me not doing anything like that. I enjoy moving my body and working towards physical fitness, and while it’s definitely challenging at times, I can say that I enjoy it. I know that’s not everyone’s story, but I believe there are ways you can at least make working out more enjoyable and that it is something you should strive to incorporate in your life. This is a topic I’ve been wanting to talk about for awhile, how I started my individual journey of making working out a habit and what I do and how it’s helped me.

For starters, it’s no secret that I’ve been active throughout my life. Way back in the day, I have blog posts where I talk about my love for basketball. I also did cross country for two years at the end of middle school, so basically since I was young, I’ve been doing some sort of sport. I also used to actually go outside more often when I was younger and go for walks, which is something I still try to do but obviously not enough because I look like a ghost anymore. Once I started high school, though, I was doing basically nothing. I knew I didn’t want to continue my sports in high school, but even over the summers past when I wasn’t actively doing my sports, I tried to work out on my own, either through little Pinterest workouts I found or created and running in my own time. Nope, not in high school. My whole freshman year, I loved to just lay in bed. I had a lot of emotional anguish at that time so working out was the last thing on my mind, even though at this time, I started getting a lot bigger in weight. I’ve been thin my whole life, but I kinda began freaking out near the end of eighth grade all throughout freshman year. I had my own insecurities anyway that just intensified those feelings because really, I was just getting my “womanly figure” as Mom said, but what happened is since I was so sedentary, all the curves I was getting ended up being pure extra fat because I wasn’t toning anything at all. The term “skinny fat” describes this phenomenon best. I know enough to know I was never fat by any means, but I just wasn’t toned at all and, as a result, I think I looked like a pufferfish back then. My face seemed extra bloated, my arms had no definition so they just looked like fat, and my hips and thighs gained quite a lot of fluff that I hated because like I said, it just didn’t seem balanced or toned.

Eventually, I knew I wanted to do something about it. I had my own body image problems at this time that kept fueling that, but it wasn’t all about how I looked, either. I constantly worried about my health and I knew exercise was important, so that always hung in the back of my mind. Plus, I did miss it, since I’d always been fairly active. I may have done a workout here and there, but it never stuck. Finally, when I was in my Victoria’s Secret model obsession, I found tons of YouTube videos of workouts that claimed they would make you look like one of those models. I saved them all, even though I didn’t actually do them until later. At the end of my freshman year, I had PE. We started doing weights on some of the days, and oh my gosh, I loved just the results I got from being in that class. That summer, I decided that I wanted to make working out a part of my routine. Shortly before the new school year started, I decided I was just going to do one of those workout videos every night. Finally, the habit stuck.

**UPDATE April 2024: I created a FREE printable for you with the best advice/things to meditate on for more positive body image in that they’ve helped me the most throughout my struggle with that. Subscribe here to receive access!**

I loved the thrill of noticing benefits, even if they were small at first. I loved finally feeling like I was doing something and experimenting with new types of workouts I could just follow along with. I definitely was able to tone and tighten up the places I’d wanted to, and while I still maintained my womanly physique, I was able to tone up all the places that were just kinda hanging out.

Unfortunately, because of my emphasis on physical results, later on throughout my sophomore year, this became a bit of a problem. Since my mindset was saturated with ideals of how I thought I needed to look, that consumed my drive to work out and eventually wore me out because I felt like I would never achieve the sort of body I wanted, even though my body was already slim, and then when I was exhausted, I would beat myself up with how I needed to work harder or else I wouldn’t ever achieve my results. Instead of relaxing through my workouts and allowing them to refresh my mind and give me the boosts to my mental health they could, they became a source of stress under my unrealistic expectations. It’s important to have a healthy perspective of exercise, body image, and the reasons why you take care of your body in the first place. Working out shouldn’t be a punishment or something that you feel like you have to do; instead, it should be a privilege, a gift that you get to move your body and let off steam while doing so.

That’s what began motivating me, is my need to have an outlet to encourage my mental health for the good and to move my body. Most of my life is sedentary; at school I would sit all day, and at home I live on my computer essentially, too, so I welcome the times where I finally get to move and push myself and feel like I’m doing something. I also realized how much exercise is a gift from God and that I’ve been blessed with the health in the first place to even think about working out, so I wanted to honor Him through taking care of myself and keeping my body strong and fit.

I was finally able to solidify this as part of my life when I made it a habit. That’s the biggest thing I realized: like anything, you can’t wait around to start. I had all these videos I was excited about doing, but finally I had to just DECIDE to do one. I’ve read that it takes 21 days to establish a habit, which is three weeks. You can start very simply; I think the first workout I did was some model’s butt workout that was like seven minutes. It was short and simple, but it was a start. Then I just went through my videos, which were only like 10 minutes on average. I know health experts recommend more time per day, but you have to start somewhere, and that’s what I did. Plus, everyone agrees something is better than nothing. If that’s what it takes to start the habit, just a 10-minute video each day, then do it! That’s honestly so simple. 10 minutes is short; I think it’s very doable. With time, you can gradually work on exercising for longer periods of time.

Speaking of which, variety also helps. Like I said, I had several videos with different routines and emphases I wanted to try out, so I was doing something new every day of the week, and that’s also beneficial for your body as well so that you don’t get conditioned to doing the same thing every day, as that can lose the effectiveness of the exercise. The goal is to make your workout routine personable. It helped for me to pick out workouts from people who had the sort of body type I was aspiring to achieve, which is why I did so many “model” workouts, but gradually I expanded to just doing more toning workouts regardless of if “model” was in the title or not. I’ve always been drawn to the lean, athletic body type, so I focused my workouts on doing just that. I picked out workouts covering the various body parts I wanted to train. That is one of the most fun parts of it all for me and still is, going through and picking out different videos, choosing which ones to do next, planning my schedules, finding new videos and variety. It’s also satisfying when I start a workout I can’t even finish and then eventually get to a point where I can do it with ease. Stick with it even if you can’t do it that well at first! During my beginner days and even now sometimes, I’ll have nights where I have to lay there for periods of the video, but you DO get stronger with time, and that’s so rewarding to feel and accomplish.

God has also used working out to help me, which has been one of my favorite benefits to experience. I’ve had nights where I feel super upset, do a workout, and it’s like as I’m going through it, I can just feel Him subtly shifting my perspective. When I’ve felt overwhelmed, exercising is a great way to calm my body and thoughts and focus that energy on a positive outlet. When I feel sluggish, it helps wake me up and leaves me feeling a better sort of fatigue. It helps me feel more productive, balanced, and in tune with Him because He’s given me my body and my ability to move it in aerobic ways, and that’s a huge blessing. I love talking to Him during my workouts when I can think, which happened a lot in my PE classes especially. I love thanking Him for the results and strength that come and how He designed my body for that. When my focus is on Him and the gift that being able to move my body is through exercise, that’s what allows me to be excited for it and crave it as part of my daily routine. I don’t like going without doing a workout each day. Obviously life happens and I don’t always fit one in, and sometimes I have to take breaks if I get overly sore or feel as though I’ve pulled something, but I do miss it when I take too much time off. I had to take three months off after my jaw surgery, so it’s only the last month that I’ve began my workouts again, and I’m feeling like I have to learn everything again haha, which sucks, but it allows me time to build up my strength again. It’s also been fun to see how my strength does come back quicker than I thought.

My Favorite Fitness Tips

Here are some of the things that have helped me the most on my journey of making exercise a habit and also seeing physical and mental results from it:

• Just start: I whined about my body and wanting to work out for a long time before I finally just decided to do it. Also, don’t be a perfectionist about it, either. When I first started, I didn’t have any specific order or plan for what I was working out when, I just went down my list of saved videos. Years later, I’ve organized my routines into working different parts of my body on certain days and such, but I didn’t do that when I was first making exercise a habit. You can learn and develop as you go like about anything else, but if you start now, then at least you can track your progress with time versus constantly thinking about it.
• Focus on the gift of working out: If you think about how much you hate it or how much you want to change your body, that’s not going to help you be productive, and then working out will probably be something you dread, which isn’t helpful when trying to make something a habit. Try shifting your perspective to instead praising God for the ability to work out and focus on just having that time with Him to clear your head and change things up rather than making how you look the primary fixation. Results will come in time, but if you constantly scrutinize yourself and wish to speed things up like I did, that will just drain you and make working out exhausting. Also, find workouts that you can genuinely enjoy. Lots of people hate running, so don’t try to make yourself run, then! You can find lower-impact workouts that still get you great results. You can focus on strength training or pick workouts that incorporate lots of cardio if you still want to get your heart rate up. You can incorporate various equipment if you want, and there’s things like barre or boxing that you could include for variety depending on your style. I’ve tried both; they’re both fun and challenging yet so different. Customizing your workouts is one of the best ways to enjoy getting fit. If you don’t like a certain style of exercise, then don’t do that again and pick a different video.
• I recommend using weights during some of your workouts: I’ve gotten some of my best results when I add weights. That’s definitely what unveiled my arm definition, and I tend to feel my workouts twice as much when I use weights. If toning and strength is your primary goal, these make all the difference. I think I get results much faster when I use weights, but of course you have to be careful not to use them every time so your muscles get rest. Also, don’t fall for the lie that using weights makes you bulky. I like that slim, lean look, which is like the opposite of getting super bulky, but it’s weights that have helped accentuate my muscles the best. I just use small amounts of weight because I’m not that strong, and then you can keep adding from there.

My current routine, after being modified and perfected and still can be over the years, looks like this:

• One day: arms with weights
• Next day: abs without weights
• Next day: butt with weights
• Next day: legs without weights
• Next day: arms without weights
• Next day: abs with weights
• Next day: butt without weights
• Next day: legs with weights

Then I repeat that cycle over and over again. I have specific videos organized by where they fall into that group, and I go through each type of video until I get back to the start. Ideally, I would also work more than one part of the body to increase my time, but right now I’m working back up to that, so that’s how I do it now. In the future, I like to do all upper body one night (arms and abs) and then lower body the next (butt and legs) and still make sure to rotate when I do weights. I will write more in the future about that and share some of my favorite online workout videos you can do for free! Did I mention that I always work out right beside my bed in my room? I don’t spend any money doing this save for when I bought my weights and mat; you don’t need to go to the gym if you don’t want to.

Every good thing is a gift from God, including health, fitness, and activity. I hope this post can give you some advice on how to go about exercising and why you should. I’m not a doctor, so if you have any specific concerns, I definitely recommend just checking in with them before really committing to a vigorous routine. Other than that, you don’t have to train for a marathon every night; something as simple as walking can make all the difference. I hope you can be reminded of that and enjoy the blessings that come with making fitness a priority. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this as well and how you stay in shape, so leave a comment and let me know! Thanks for reading!