Do you Love to exercise or did you Learn to love exercise?

At this point I genuinely love everything I'm doing: lifting weights, running, and calisthenics, even stretching before bed. I find it pretty easy to motivate myself because I love how I feel during and after workouts, and I love the changes to my health and appearance. Working out hasn't been a part of my adult life before, although in my 20s I didn't have a car so did a lot of walking and biking. I basically worked my way up to what I'm doing now starting the middle of last year, and although I could certainly see dialing back if necessary due to time or injury, I hope to never go back to the sedentary place I was in my early 30s - my body just hurt all the time and I felt much older than I actually was.

I have always been a high energy person and actually enjoy constantly walking around, sorting & organizing stuff, cleaning house, etc. Even at my largest I am the type of person who would pretty much jump out of a chair to do just about anything when the urge struck. That's just become more of my personality (to some friends' chagrin, actually)...I'm very Energizer rabbit and do everything very fast.

I have never liked anything to do with sports or working out in a gym. I may even be mildly phobic about that stuff if I'm honest.

I learned to love walking and hiking as part of my getting healthier efforts about ten years ago. That has just increased for me in the past 4 years as I hit my goal range. My interest in swimming and bicycling waxes and wanes (seasonally) but isn't super strong, I kind of wish it were. I have done a bit of running but it's not for me. I'd rather do a ten mile brisk walk or hike than run 1 mile.

For me it was equal parts learning to enjoy the results when I started to see progress and finding the mode of exercise I enjoy the most.

I never lifted weights with any regularity up until about three years ago; had a semester early in high school where we lifted a few times per week for gym class (teacher was the strength/conditioning coach and they triple-booked the gym) and would fart around in the weight room in college some but never followed a routine or had specific goals. I used the rowing machines at the rec in college and enjoyed the efficiency and results but not really the action. Similarly, I dabbled in running when wooing my wife when we first started dating and will occasionally run a 5-10K with her but it's not something I ever crave to do. I gained a good bit of weight (~30lbs) over the first few months of my first job out of college which had me traveling quite a bit. Long work days and an expense account often resulted in steak or a burgers and a beer at local establishments. Looking in the mirror and being unhappy after only three months on the job lead me to start using MyFitnessPal and wading off into the less-reputable portions of the internet to procure a bootleg copy of P90X and getting a set of Bowflex adjustable dumbbells. I really liked some of the workout days, but not all of them and quickly fell into a routine of cherry-picking the workouts/days I liked. Since I cleaned up my nutrition some and kept to my calories more often than not I still lost weight but my physique results lagged behind the before/after promises since I was really only doing a few of the first batch of workouts over and over. Maintained that way, not really progressing at all for a while until I finally woke up to the fact that half-baked lifting and running wasn't going to result in the muscular physique I sought. A friend's wife was peddling Beachbody stuff at the time and loaned me a copy of P90X3 under the premise that is was way better than the original and would surely get me ripped. Some time later, after starting and stopping the routine a number of times I gave the DVDs back as I realized there was clearly a limit to the exercise I'd make myself do if I didn't like what I was doing. Doing some googling I came across Marc Perry's BuiltLean website. His story resonated with me after my work-related weight gain and certainly liked the idea of looking as he does. I followed that program for some time and really liked what I saw in terms of my strength gains following a standard progression for the first time. I soon upgraded from my trusty dumbbells to a rack from Dick's Sporting Goods and an Olympic barbell set from Dunham's, moved to the basement, and I was smitten with lifting. I was adding weight to the bar consistently and loving every minute of it, but after a few cycles of BuiltLean I was craving for more volume and strength. A wandering path through Stronglifts, NerdFitness, bodybuilding.com routines, and endless tweaks and tinkering with my programming has me squarely addicted to lifting in a hybrid powerlifting/bodybuilding style.