If you’ve read this far, then you probably agree by now that the cause of your abandoning an exercise and diet routine when you didn't mean to, is not the difficulty of the routine, or your lack of time, or the bad things that happen to you in your daily life. None of this makes it impossible to continue the routine. Instead, the reason for abandoning the routine is what you’re saying to yourself about it, and about the events that come up in your life. Below, we'll take a look at what you’re may be saying to yourself, and if it's negative, or non-productive, or an impediment in achieving your goals, then we will try to replace it with different, more useful things to say to yourself.

As you read through the items below, do two things. First, be honest with yourself and take a moment to ask yourself what you're really thinking about your fitness schedule--write this out on a piece of paper if you have to. Second, if you find that you are having negative or unproductive thoughts about your fitness schedule, then use our reasons below to change those thoughts. Ask yourself things like, "is it realistic to believe this thought?" "Will believing this thought actually help me exercise and eat better?" Then debate with yourself and look for proof whether the thought is realistic and whether it is a helpful thought or not. If you cannot find any proof, or cannot find it helpful and constructive, then give the thought up, because hanging on to it certainly won't help you. So, let me repeat myself about the two things you can do as you read below: One, honestly try to find the thoughts you're having about your fitness schedule, and two, debate and prove or disprove those thoughts. If you prove them, then keep them. If you disprove them, then toss them.

Yes, it is hard. But too hard? How can anything be too hard? To say it’s too hard is to say that it’s completely impossible. And obviously, it’s not completely impossible because there is actually nothing at all except your thoughts that are stopping you from getting on that treadmill right now. Don’t believe me? Then try it for yourself: get on that treadmill and run for twenty minutes. Then have a salad. I’m not suggesting you turn this into your routine. I’m only saying that you should try the twenty minute run as a scientific experiment, because that is how you will disprove the thought that it is too hard, therefore impossible.

Oh, you meant impossible to do the whole routine, say, for thirty days. So I say, really? Well then, why don’t you try another scientific experiment to see if it really is impossible: try it for thirty days, at the end of which time you will know whether you were right or not. What's that? You're not going to try it? Why? Aaah… yes, because you will find that it is not impossible after all--of that I am 100% certain. Why am I so certain? Because thousands of people do it for thirty days or longer, which says it obviously is not impossible. True, it might be difficult, no one is denying that. But impossible? No way.

Since you’ve just proven to yourself that, no matter how hard it is to get a fitness routine going, it’s never too hard, then it’s probably time to give up your self defeating thoughts, and replace them with this: “Sure it’s hard; but it’s not too hard; and it’s definitely not impossible. And if it’s not impossible, then the only thing stopping me is me!”

Really? Well, be realistic. If you’re working toward a target date, say, prom, how long have you really, truly, actually got? Two days? Then I’d say you’re wasting your time exercising and dieting because nothing on earth will get you fit in two days (not even the miracle diets in those stupid magazines at the supermarket checkout counter). But chances are that you have at least thirty days, right? Right? Guess what, in thirty days of exercise and good diet there will be a genuine change in your appearance and in how you feel. Thirty days! Not a lot of time, and certainly worth the investment if you really want to look your best prom night. But the change won’t happen all at once, obviously, so the reality is that in two weeks you will already feel different (better than you did before starting to exercise and eat well), and will start looking different because you will have more energy and will be that much more glowing with life. How do I know about this thirty day thing? It happens to be a medical fact. That’s why all the TV advertisers for exercise and diet techniques always tell you that you will see results in thirty days or your money back (provided, they add, that you stick to your routine for those thirty days).

So what are you telling yourself about waiting for the effects to show up that you could be telling yourself differently, and more to your advantage? If you have thirty or more days, then you're telling yourself that it will take too long and that thirty days is not enough, and so why get started in the first place? Well, the truth is that thirty days is plenty of time, and that the effects will be visible long before the thirty days are up. So get cracking!

When your life is less complicated? Think about it. When was your life less complicated than it is today? Last year? Two years ago? I thought so. But how do you know it will be less complicated tomorrow? Are you a fortune teller, or is there a spirit pouring the future into your ear? No, eh? So first of all, you don’t really know if there will be a time when your life is less complicated, because if you knew that, then you'd know the future, and then I'd be giving you a call so that you can tell me the winning lottery numbers. But second, the evidence says that your life was complicated two years ago, it was complicated last year, it is complicated today, and that means--I mean, you can really say it with confidence!-- that your life will almost certainly be as complicated tomorrow, and at any future time. In other words, this complexity thing is probably your life’s normal state. And why should your life’s normal state change in the future? Especially since graduation is coming up, and college, and work, and marriage, and who knows what else!

So it sounds like you can forget about believing that there will be a time when your life is less complicated. Given the facts, that's not going to happen. Indeed, chances are that your life will get more complicated, not less. That means that if you’re serious about exercising and eating right, the only thing you can realistically do, is to work them into your already busy schedule.

What, then, are you telling yourself, and what could you tell yourself differently? If you're telling yourself that life will get less complicated (or better, or easier), you know this isn't true. The thing to be telling yourself (because you can prove it), is that your life will remain just as complicated, and maybe even get more complicated. That means, that if you want to get into a fitness routine, you'd better evaluate how important this is to you, and if you decide it's very important, then you need to integrate it into an already complicated schedule. No way around that, sorry. If you want a way around that, then go live in a fairy tale. What's that? You can't live in fairytales? I see.

Look at point # 2 above. This is the same reason for quitting as for not getting started in the first place. Just keep these facts in mind: it takes thirty days for results to really show. However, they will start showing gradually as early as two weeks into your routine. And also remember, that because the change is gradual, you probably won’t notice it, although it’s happening anyway—it’s like looking at yourself in the mirror over the years: obviously you’ve gotten older; but you haven’t noticed it.

Okay, you’re tired, and you’ve had a busy day. It happens to all of us. Does that mean it’s now impossible to stick to your routine? Obviously not, because, tired as you are, you can always prove that it’s not impossible by actually getting on that treadmill and getting into your routine. If that isn’t good enough, then think about it this way: you’re already pretty tired, so what’s it matter if you get a little more tired by exercising? If nothing else, at least you’ll feel better about yourself because, despite your tiredness, you stuck to your goals. And finally, you’ve probably noticed this fascinating phenomenon about our bodies: when we’re brain tired (which is what you always are unless you’ve been doing serious physical activity, in which case you don’t need the exercise anyway), when we’re brain tired, then doing a physical workout of some kind always makes us feel less tired, even though we’re expending more energy. Weird, huh?

Your boyfriend left you, or your parents came down on you, or you wrecked your car, or you failed the big exam...so? What is the logical, rational connection between what just happened to you, and not sticking to your fitness routine? None, clearly. So whatever connection you’ve made, it’s actually an excuse for not doing your routine. Besides, who’s going to lose out if you do not continue with your routine? Is it going to be your ex-boyfriend? is it going to be your parents? or the cop that wrote up the report on your car? or the teacher that flunked you? No way! It’s going to be you, just you, and only you. So, why would you want to compound one bad thing with another bad thing? Instead, if you stick to your routine, you will at least have that one good thing to feel proud of, that on this day of horrors, still you were strong-willed and determined enough to do your exercises and eat right!

Okay then, let me summarize what I’ve tried to explain to you in this section on the care of your body. First, I told you that the problem is not with the difficulty of exercising and eating right. The problem is actually getting into the right frame of mind to start a longterm routine for exercising and eating right. Right? Second, I said that generally, it isn’t events that make us feel down or unhappy or in any way cause our emotional states. Instead, it is how we think about those events that then causes our emotional states, including feelings of hopelessness, defeat, and oh-what’s-the-use feelings. I also said that, if it's our thoughts that cause our bad feelings, then we can change how we think about events so that our feelings won’t be so messed up. Still with me? Good. So then I said that if this is true of all our thoughts and all of life's events, then it’s also true about our problems with exercising and eating right: in other words, it’s not our schedules, or bad events in our life, that that stop us from getting into a good fitness routine. Instead, it’s our thoughts that stop us. So what we have to change are these thoughts. How do we change these thoughts? By examining them to see if they actually make any sense, and if they don’t (which they probably won’t), by changing them for thoughts that do make sense, and which will therefore allow us to start on our fitness routines. What about the fitness routines themselves? Actually, the don’t matter all that much, because it’s not the program you choose that makes the difference, but whether or not you stick to it.

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