What motivates you to get off your butt?

I exercise almost daily, no planning at all. It is just something I do.

The thing that motivates me to get off my butt is the size of my butt.
But really, I find if I just tell myself "Five minutes. Get up and go walk for five minutes"... I'll end up doing 30 minutes or more. If I tell myself, "Go to the pool, if it's crazy busy, you don't have to stay", I almost always end up in the water for at least 45 minutes.
And as I get more fit, I find my body craves activity. It's been raining this week, so I haven't been walking at the lake, and my body is rebelling!

I was waking up every morning saying I didn't want to go to the gym. But every night I laid out my gym clothes on top of my dresser, packed my gym bag, and made myself put those clothes on and go, period. Right now I'm on bed rest because I had surgery, and I cannot wait to get back to the gym. That's after a month of going M-F. I can't tell you why, but I want to go back so badly.

I may go right back to my old pattern of not wanting to go, and I know I will still go, because it is the best thing for me to do. It is an act of self love and self care. It is defying the laziness that resulted in my getting this fat in the first place. It's like controlling your food here. You need to make a decision every day to do what's best for you and simply do it. This is not easy in general...weight loss is a lot of hard work and self discipline. But making the decision is. We make decisions every day.

You can only motivate yourself.

The Fitbit challenges I participate in definitely motivate me to move more. Also, when its time for me to go to the gym, if I'm not up to it, I force myself to get in the car and drive there anyway. I tend to notice, that once I'm there and I see other's around me working, it motivates me to just do it and by the time I'm done I feel great and I'm glad I went.

Keep track of your blood sugars, cholesterol, resting heart rate and blood pressure. Keep a fitness routine and you can always refer to the reports as motivation.

Knowing that if I don't get off my butt, I'll slip back to where I was a few months ago, achy, out of breath, and borderline obese. I can't do that anymore, I'm getting too old plus I got rid of all my big clothes. And on my 4 month anniversary I posted to Facebook my before & after pics for the world to see. I did that so now I really have some serious accountability.

JoRocka wrote: »

Mediocrity scares me.

So.therefore I strive for more.

Yeah mediocrity sucks *kitten*.

kquick316 wrote: »

I need some advice for when I just don't feel like working out! TIA

Objectives, goals, a plan.

Fior me that means planning what races I want to do in the year, and structuring training around that.

So a Marathon has a 12 week lead up, a half marathon has a six week lead up. Each of those has a base building period, a speed period and a taper before the race itself.

Knowing that every day of inaction is a step in the wrong direction. Every day of action get me closer to where I want to be. Simple as that.

Chieflrg wrote: »

I am my motivation, I like to have fun and improve myself physically and mentally. I never want to look back at life and say what if I tried harder.

I don't want regrets either.

I also really like feeling a little sore. Knowing I can feel that burn after I've done a challenging workout is great motivation for me personally. I also know that every day I train, I'm a little stronger, with a little more endurance, and am a little closer to being able to do the things I want to do. I'm working up to a spartan race, and am training to resume jiu jitsu soon. I think it helps to find what it is you love about exercising and remind yourself that if you can get off your butt, you'll get to do/feel/achieve xyz.