How to Make Yourself Exercise When You Really Don't Want to

Everyone needs motivation to exercise sometimes. Here are some tips on what to do when you just don't feel like moving.

• Promise yourself you will do some exercise everyday. You will establish a habit this way. On rest days, just go for a stroll or do a little light stretching.
• Commit to ten minutes of whatever exercise you choose. Usually you will be energized enough to do a little more. If not, maybe you really are too tired to exercise, and that's OK too. Just try again tomorrow.
• Find some fitness friends and make play dates with them. Go for walks or to the gym or a fitness class.
• Get obsessed with numbers- not on the scale of course. Get a pedometer and challenge yourself to walk 10,000 steps a day. Or do 1000 steps on your stepper as fast as you can and try to beat your score the next time. Or do five push ups one day, six the next. Or hold a yoga pose for three breaths one time and four the next...you get the idea.
• Grab a calender and make an X on everyday you exercise. You will begin to see a streak forming and you won't want to break that streak.
• Reward yourself. I like to treat myself to a glass of chocolate milk or a hot bath at the end of a tough workout. I feel like I have to earn it, though. Thinking about my treats make me workout longer and harder.

Studies show that people who wake up early to exercise before they start their day are more likely to stick with their program. Here are a few tips on how to get moving when you would rather just sleep in.

• Set your internal alarm. If I need to get up early to exercise, I tell myself as I am falling asleep "I will wake up at 7 am to exercise." Usually I wake up at the right time. And, since I promised myself I would do it, I know the guilt will eat away at me all day if I don't. So I get up.
• Plan ahead. Know what workout you want to do and have all of your equipment and workout clothes ready ahead to go the night before.
• Tell your family you will be getting up early to exercise. Once you say the words out loud and others know your plan, it makes it much harder to back out. That guilt thing again.
• Ignore the little voice in your head that says you are too tired or that the bed is too warm and cozy. Just nudge it aside and get up.
• Think about how you will feel if you don't exercise- tired, sloth-like, guilty. Know that you will always feel better if you do something.