We all know that exercise has many health benefits. No doubt. We don’t question it. It is a fact.

However, exercise is…well…exercise.

It’s hard. It takes effort, and no matter how strongly we believe in it, doing so can be challenging.

Here are a couple of tips if you think you can’t exercise.

1. Prioritize your exercise.
2. Make it a pleasure, not a punishment.

Prioritize your exercise

By prioritizing, I don’t mean establishing a training schedule of what’s coming up and when. While that CAN be an important part of any physically active lifestyle, at this point, I’m just trying to get you off the couch and out the door.

So right now, I’m talking about making exercise a regular part of your daily routine. It should be as much a part of your life as brushing your teeth or getting dressed. With that in mind, I want you to have the same feeling when you skip your workout as you would if you were walking outside without your pants on.

This means that working out, working out, should be a high priority (see?) in your daily activities. We often tend to try to fit exercise into little niches and nooks around other activities. It’s better to give physical activity a front row seat and work a lot of the other “stuff” in your life around your exercise routine.

Make it a pleasure, not a punishment

No one has decreed that “exercise” has to be pushing weights in a gym, or riding a bicycle until the lungs give out.

First lesson?

Start small and build up slowly. Unless you are already in good shape and regularly exercise your body, there will be a “training” period. Plus, what you see in the mirror, or on the bathroom scale, doesn’t even begin to tell you what’s going on inside your body.

It’s not just about muscle and fat. There are glands and hormones, and even the brain, involved in fitness. You can’t see what’s going on inside and it’s important to realize that if you try to do too much too fast, you may actually do more harm than good.

Second lesson?

You are more likely to do what you enjoy than what someone says you HAVE to do. Not only are there many different forms of exercise and fitness routines and regimens, but also many activities that some people would not consider “exercise” at all.

For example, bicycling, swimming, gardening, walking, and yoga, to name just a few.

The fact is, few of us just “can’t” exercise. Most of us just don’t want to. We see it as work, as effort now without immediate reward.

Well, the rewards are there, not just in the health benefits of exercise, but in the many physical, psychological, and emotional ways that regular physical activity, defined as exercise or not, can positively impact our lives.

The bottom line is, if you can wiggle your fingers, touch your toes, shake your head from side to side, you can put some activity into your life. If he’s lucky enough to have full use of his limbs, then he can’t honestly say he “can’t” exercise… he’s just found excuses not to exercise.