**Personalized Approach to Staying Healthy**

When it comes to adopting healthy habits, everyone's journey is unique and requires a personalized approach. For some people, incorporating all three aspects of fitness - exercise, sleep, and nutrition - might seem like too much to handle. However, with a gradual and incremental approach, anyone can make progress towards their health goals.

**Starting Small**

For those who feel overwhelmed by the prospect of making significant changes to their lifestyle, starting small is often the best approach. Choosing one area to focus on first can help build momentum and confidence. If exercise is the chosen starting point, it's essential to begin with activities that are enjoyable and manageable, such as short walks or light stretching exercises. As progress is made, the intensity and duration of workouts can be gradually increased.

**The Power of Hydration**

Staying hydrated is another crucial aspect of overall health, and it often gets overlooked in favor of more visible changes like exercise or diet. However, adequate hydration plays a significant role in energy levels, focus, and motivation. Drinking plenty of water throughout the day can help boost energy levels and reduce fatigue, making it easier to stick to exercise routines.

**The Interconnectedness of Habits**

One of the key takeaways from this discussion is that each aspect of health - exercise, sleep, and nutrition - tends to bleed into one another. For example, if someone is getting better sleep, they are likely to find it easier to exercise, which in turn can help with motivation to eat a healthier diet. By acknowledging these interconnectedness relationships, individuals can create a holistic approach to their health and wellness.

**Motivating Ourselves**

Staying motivated is an ongoing challenge for many people. Rather than setting unrealistic expectations and feeling discouraged when they're not met, it's essential to focus on progress, not perfection. For some, this means tracking small victories and celebrating milestones along the way. Others might find inspiration in joining a community or finding a workout buddy for added motivation.

**The Power of Technology**

In recent years, technology has played an increasingly significant role in supporting our health and wellness journeys. From wearable devices to mobile apps, there are numerous tools available that can help track progress, provide guidance, and offer support. The upcoming Fitness Month on various tech websites, including Android Central, CrackBerry, iMore, and WP Central, promises to be a valuable resource for those looking to make positive changes in their lives.

**Getting Creative with Motivation**

One creative approach some people have taken is to use technology in innovative ways. For instance, Rene Richie, the host of this show, shared an amusing anecdote about using his Fitbit on his dog and seeing him get only three steps a day! While it may not be the most conventional method, it highlights the importance of finding fun and engaging ways to stay motivated.

**Engaging with the Community**

For those looking for additional support and motivation, online communities are an excellent resource. By joining forums, social media groups, or other platforms dedicated to health and wellness, individuals can connect with others who share similar goals and experiences. This shared enthusiasm and camaraderie can help keep people motivated and inspired to continue making positive changes in their lives.

**Supporting Our Sponsors**

Finally, a special thank you goes out to Squarespace.com, our sponsor for this episode. By using the offer code "Zen" at checkout, visitors can take advantage of an all-in-one platform that makes it easy to create and manage websites. This partnership has been invaluable in helping us share health-related content with a wider audience.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, adopting healthy habits is a personal journey that requires patience, self-awareness, and creativity. By starting small, acknowledging the interconnectedness of our habits, and finding innovative ways to stay motivated, anyone can make progress towards their health goals. Whether you're looking for inspiration, guidance, or simply a community to support you, there are numerous resources available to help you on your journey.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi this is Georgia and I'm Renee and welcome to Zen and Tech where we try to Center our inner geek and uh live better more connected lives zenite is brought to you today by Squarespace the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website portfolio and online store for a free trial and 10% off visit squarespace.com Zen and and enter offer code Zen checkout a better web starts with your website Georgia how are you doing I'm good Renee how are you I'm doing very well thank you you know what what it is Fitness month again Fitness month again yes I'm dressed for it we're doing it later this year we did it last time we did it I think in February to kind of do it the New Year's resolution but this year we're doing it uh just to get ready for summer I I like it better I think that everyone's trying to be a little healthier the weather is warm it's nice you can do more things if you're in a cold climate as I am so yeah I like it when we're doing it now yeah so I guess what I wanted to talk to you about tonight was motivation like both getting and staying motivated because that's so that's so difficult that is what everyone talks about everyone would like to exercise more would like to be a little bit more fit but how do you keep at it that's so I I would not like to exercise more I like to be able to take a little pill and instantly become more fit fair but you're not getting the same reaction you really have to do it part of the action is because it is difficult you uh feel more inspired afterwards so now we've talked about this before there really is a difference I don't know if there's a difference or not but there's exercise and there is activity and I know like I work behind a desk it's a standing desk but I work behind a desk for eight hours plus a day kids sit behind a desk at school for eight hours plus a day this is not how humans evolved humans evolve to hunt to gather to farm previously if we you know sat down for eight hours even if we stood around for eight hours we would be considered useless people we're not we're not made we're not made for sitting around for long extended periods of time it is not good for our health now if I even have to reach for the remote to change a channel I'm upset with that there's a problem it used to be that our day was spent uh hunting Gathering doing different things seeking out new environments and or running or hunting Predators which those seems really strenuous and stressful was good for our health it kept us going and now our lives are mainly just sitting around trying to do as little work as possible kind of reminds me of the movie Wall-E where everyone's sitting around on these moving chairs and we've all become like um blob people you know some days after being on the couch for a while I feel like that yeah so we evolve to be these active Dynamic moving creatures and now we leave we live very sedentary Lifestyles which is almost why exercise has become a thing in a normal not a normal world but an ancestral World we'd just be quote unquote exercising all day as part of our everyday activity but now it seems like you really have to make a concerted effort to get your exercise in right it used to be just part of our lifestyle if you had to get water you had to get food you had to travel and so because of that we would because we had to now because we don't really have to the water pretty much comes to us we don't have to do it so we don't because again we're also made to conserve energy which if you can think that there wasn't a lot of food that would be a great survival maintenance but now food is plentiful and we still have this fail safe of trying to conserve energy lots of food want to conserve energy and then we have chocolate all over the place it's really not good for our bodies but also it's not good for our brain so previously our motivator was survival if you wanted to eat if you wanted to not be eaten if you wanted to have a you know a good crop on your farm you had to do all these physical things now instead of that we're left to find our own M motivators and I'll admit it's hard I mean it is so easy to just sit behind the computer and type it is hard to get up and do exercise just for exercise's sake well that's what we're going to try to do we're going to try to give the reasons why you want to exercise plus some things that can help you on the right track and nothing is perfect you have to be really honest with what type of person you are are and then also to know all of the great benefits that you get from exercising which can help you get back on the track if you fall off of it now are are we just going to deal with exercise or are we going to consider like nutrition and that stuff as all part and parcel of living a healthier or better life we're going to deal with all of it for sure but today we're going to focus mainly on staying motivated to exercise but yes we're going to talk about like sleep is all all of this works together in one package but today we're going to mainly focus on I really do have to get up you yes you really do have to get up all right so why is motivation well first why is it hard why is it difficult why do I not just intrinsically want to do this well because as I said before food was scarce and if we wasted energy needlessly we would die off because we're wasting it where we do not need so we are made to take the path easiest for ourselves so that we don't waste energy and increase the chances that we can die off now we've evolved much faster from our subsistence lifestyle into being able to have if you're lucky where you live food that is exceptionally plentiful that is easy to get and there's less and less people that are living below the poverty line depending on of course where you live so now that we have so much food that we want to stay sedentary because we don't want to waste energy and then we are spending time eating because eating also makes us feel happy happy so we're getting a little shot of dopamine which is our little brain's you know happy hormone that feels comforting to us also from eating and then we continue the cycle because the longer that we feel sedentary we also don't get the same amount of dopamine and feeling happy and calm in our brain as well so basically more sitting on a sofa watching Green Arrow do those crazy pull-ups eating Cheetos is uh almost a self-fulfilling Doom than doing those crazy pull-ups myself while he eat Cheetos right because then you're going to be a little angry at yourself for eating so many Cheetos although they are delicious I completely understand why and then you're going to watch more TV and it's going to be more difficult as well a body in motion wants to stay in motion and you're also slowing down your metabolism the problem with slowing down your metabolism is that you are no longer burning as many calories either so eating one bowl of Cheetos may have taken a certain amount of time to burn off off let's say 2 hours now that you've sat on the couch your metabolism has slowed down that means that your body is not converting energy as quickly and so now it might take three hours to burn off that bowl of Cheetos so pretty much what I'm saying is if you exercise you can eat more Cheetos maddening it's mading I tell you so how do I get motivated Georgia how do I want to do this well I think one of the things that people don't realize and I think it's kind of a neat trick is that EX exercise is great for your brain most people don't know this one is it's great for learning so the more that you exercise the better that you can so if you're studying for a test it's actually good to give yourself a 15 20 minute exercise cool down period of time and then study our brains are then primed for taking in knowledge because if we see new surroundings if we're having to hunt or fight our brains are saying oh a lot of dangerous new scenarios we better start learning so that we don't do something that could put us in danger so that's one thing and the second thing is that we hit off all of these great endorphins and we get a little shot of dopamine from exercising so we lower our pain threshold and we feel happier about ourselves so it's and also younger it will keep you feeling and being younger you know if you don't use it you lose it it's true so exercise is good not just for your body but also for your own feeling of sense of self sense of strength and intelligence it's pretty much like a super pill except it comes from push-ups pull-ups or doing any other activity where you have to keep moving so I mean what you say is all fine but again it's one of those those those continuing themes of our show where that's such a future benefit for so much present annoyance I want to know how like what what will help me get going now not like some benefit that you know some abstract benefit in the future okay well first is you have to decide if you really want to do this yes or no I think that a lot of people say I will exercise when it feels right if you're going to wait till it feels right you might as well just not it's not going to feel right this is going to be effort exercise is effort and it is you're not telling me it's it's a lot it's difficult it is difficult there's a reason why people don't want to do it I'm sorry I'm not going to lie to you I would love to say this is all you know happy uh fluffy clouds uh you know rainbows and unicorn let me ask you this let's let's say I'm loath to exercise I I believe and you tell me if I'm wrong that I can Jedi mind trick myself into this that I can change the parameters of the equation so for example if I don't want to exercise maybe I want to play video games and maybe I could do something like get I don't know an Xbox and connect and get a dancing game and then oh I happen to be getting exercise but I'm actually playing a video game exactly so what you can do is once you figure out what works for you and what doesn't game the system system be really honest with yourself so yeah make exercise fun instead of making it something that seems contrived and you're just standing in one place staring at a blank wall if you have much more fun playing Dance Dance Revolution go do that you're moving you're feeling silly you're racking up points you can um play against your friends humiliate each other learn moves that will make your children embarrassed to know you I'm doing the Superman son I'm doing the Superman I've done that way too many times it's it's just make it enjoyable and if you're not motivated to do it alone I'm not great for exercising on my own I'm I'm fully trained to be able to do that I join a club put okay hold I want to get more into this fun thing first sure before you before we get on to other people so we have we have video games and there are video games that actually require like you to move around right like there was um what was the original Nintendo won the Wii right and they had the sports games and there was boxing and there was tennis and now we have a lot of fun yeah now we have the the connect thing and that's sort of I find that interesting because it's got a little bit of competitiveness I guess especially if you do have someone else there but uh maybe even it's online maybe it's even beating your own score but that seems to me like a really fun like like fun could be a a way of getting me to do something that I wouldn't do just on my own exactly you get to enjoy you can play a video game you are racking up points and you're moving because the the cool part about playing a video game is that it's going to force you to move because you want to get your score even though your body is saying nah I don't really want to and that's the difference between doing say a workout video which is also really great but you're watching the person and you might say well you know what no one's going to track me if I go a little bit LAX on this movement or not with a video game you're going to get shut out if you don't pass the score so that motivates you maybe to stretch a little bit further jump a little bit higher reach a little bit more to the side and so you're going to probably get a little bit more of a workout and hopefully you'll enjoy it more as well yeah and I think it's important because video games traditionally up until recently they have all been about um sitting down with a controller in front of something which is back to the sitting down sort of a problem you're exercising but just your thumbs and fingers yeah and like maybe you have you know titanically strong thumbs but this new way of stuff I think is really exciting and really interesting and it's also if you don't already have something maybe an excuse to get that video game system you've been been looking for just if you if the price of getting it is maybe that you have to do these highly active games as well right and you can enjoy it you can play games to your friends you can bring friends over you're also listening to music which is great for a motivator and or the the video game sounds and you're motivated to keep going even though your body might say you know what I want to take a break so is strong exactly so are there other ways to have to make it more fun to make it an activity that you enjoy rather than dread like I know some people respond to music like if you have if you have great stuff on your phone or or or your your mp3 player or even if you subscribe to a service like son like uh sorry like sza or um I'm so terrible at these Ario or Spotify one of those things music seems to me to be something that just drives you it inspires you you what the great part about music is that you're not thinking about how much I'm suffering it can move you to Greater Heights when you're running or jumping or deciding to play whatever sport you want to play it helps like it's almost like your background theme music so it works great in movies and it also works great in real life now I have a couple suggestions for music if I may sure please so one is I mean it depends on how you do it like if you are if you want headsets uh because you're either jogging out on a street or you're at a gym or you're some place where you can't like your music can't be loud it has to be something just inclusive for you get really good sports headsets because a lot of the headsets that come with stuff a lot of the ones that are commonly sold are not meant for intense activity and they'll fall out or they won't fit or they'll drive you nuts in a way that distracts you from your exercise but there are headsets that either Loop over your ear or specially made I mean Georgia you and I have been to uh shows like mac world or CES where people do backflips wearing headset and there's stuff that is specifically designed for that that I think is really good to have they're amazing and there's headsets now that are exceptionally comfortable and won't fall out when you're doing almost anything plus if you're more inclined to water sports you can get I think overboard and some other companies make uh ear phones that are completely waterproof so and as well as a pack that you can put your MPC player or your smartphone into so that you can listen to your music while you're swimming or I don't know if wakeboarding would be dangerous with with your um earphones in but whatever you really enjoy to do kite surfing I would love to do kite surfing so another recommendation is I I just got a rowing machine because you know I I I hurt myself I I have a detached ligament in my or tendon or something in my ankle and I can't do the the Brazilian jiujitsu that I used to do a lot so I got a rowing machine because it seemed it seemed like a good exercise and something that I could do even with a messed up Ankle but it's loud enough that I can't hear just you know a tablet or or a phone or MP3 player on its own but it's also at home so I don't really have to wear uh headphones which kind of Drive kind of drive me nuts so I'm using a uh a jam box a Jawbone jam box and they different manufacturers beats makes the pill and they're all sorts of really good um box like this and it's a little Bluetooth player and you just put it somewhere close by and it makes you know whether you're listening to music I don't listen to a lot of music I watch a lot of TV and stuff so I'll watch Netflix or iTunes or something while I'm exercising it also helps me keep track of the amount of time I'm doing it because you know there's natural breaks in the show where commercials used to be right um and this is loud enough that I can hear it even over the noise of the machine um and even if I'm doing body weight training or something there's just you know your breathing gets heavier your you get a little bit of a pounding in your head it's it's nice to have Ambient sound uh that you can really enjoy while you're working out right and it just keeps you keeps you going so it's nice to have some music that is yours that you've chosen that you find that's motivating I have uh on my phone just a set of tracks that's just for you know fight music so I use that for whenever I'm training and it just keeps me going which I really like I have a Sono system at home and I would love to just have an extra play one speaker in my workout room but they don't support AirPlay I'm GNA just complain about that again just for the you should you should they should they should support that they should absolutely support that all right so Georgie you mentioned before and you mentioned here like wakeboarding and and water activities and stuff that you can do with other people so I know there are some people who are incredibly self-disciplined who just say I'm going to exercise and that single act of will makes some exercise but there's something to be said and you know when we did Brazilian jiu-jitsu you did not want to be the one person who was behind everybody else it was again an ego motivator a group motivator and that seems very powerful for some people too right I'm I'm not great for being self-motivated though I'm fully trained to be able to do it and if I'm teaching a class for other people I will train and train exceptionally hard so I put my money where my m is and I join a club and do something that the activity is fun and I want to do so uh we're planning to start archery not a high physical fitness still in cardio though I think that I'm going to get a lot of arm strength in order to do it uh and also I do kickboxing and Jiu-Jitsu at a secondary location one is because I have that group mentality I have other people there they're going to be waiting for me and hoping that I'm coming to train so I'm going to feel bad if I let them down the second thing is that I have a teacher that's there and saying hey work harder what are you doing and I enjoy that so it appeals to kind of my type A personality of wanting to be achievement oriented and there's a whole bunch of goals that I'm trying to hit in whatever class I want to do it makes it a little bit more fun you're exercising without thinking about exercising you're thinking about getting good at a skill which I really like yeah and the one thing that I like about that too is it's almost like the video game thing where you become motivated to succeed like Brazilian jiu-jitsu if you're on an exercise bike and you get tired you can stop if you're grappling and you get tired someone's going to choke you out or try to hurt your arm I mean you have a lot of motivation to keep going if you're playing soccer I mean Sports in general Combat Sports yes but Sports in general are great because you know your team depends on you or that someone else is going to get a goal there's all sorts of things that force you to keep going even beyond that where you know your lazy muscle engages exactly exactly um you can also choose to have other people that are wanting to exercise to go with you you can enjoy your time with your friends chat while if you're choosing to to jog or to train you're with each other and you're keeping each other motivated and hopefully supportive to each other as well which is really really nice yeah so you already have the thing like you know gamify it a little bit make it into a game play and now you have adding a second element to it so if you know that you on your own are not responsible enough or or disciplined enough to do it you add you know the other person who's going to sort of make sure that you do it and sort of a third element for me is always accountability uh like if if there's like no if there's a nebulous goal or no nothing keeping track of it it seems easy to cheat the system but we have a whole bunch of Technology now that's a really cool way even if you don't have somebody else even if you don't want to get like let's say video games annoy you or whatever you have ways technological ways of being accountable to yourself um can I go through a couple of them oh okay sure uh so like for example I have a bunch of different um Fitness bands here there's the Jawbone uh up there's the Nike fuel band and there's the um Fitbit and what these do is these measure steps so let's say you you you don't have a video game you don't have friends but you have a goal you decide to do 10 10,000 steps a day this will let you measure that you've done them and you can see and a lot of the apps will do a graph like red is you haven't even done a thousand steps you lazy whatever such and such but then you get to Yellow you get to Green you see your progress so it's gamified in a different way George is that a dog sorry okay continue all right I'm gonna ask about that dog again later yeah I was supposed to be with the go with a friend okay so no so let's do that let's go back to that for second okay so your friend is now a small Ewok like creature well some people will say to me Georgia I don't have any friends or they don't want to train and so you can just bring your pet bring your pet to train with you so they can inspire you uh make it a little bit more fun if you have social anxiety and you're worried about training in front of other people going to a dog park or bringing a ball and running around with whatever pet you might have Geral cat dog um it makes it a little bit more fun and you don't feel that bad because you're playing ball with your dog as you run around this is that hi Mila that's pretty awesome because and a sort of play I guess that fits in with the other thing is you don't have to play electronically if you have a dog you can run with your dog you can go to the park with your dog if you have kids you can go you know play catch with your kids play Touch football with your kids uh you can even go to a go do Jungle Gym stuff there's all sorts of physical play activity you can do definitely and just want to make sure that it makes it a little bit less um I think that people look at exercise and think that it has to be really really strenuous and really hard on the system which it doesn't start small small light easy that just enjoy a little bit of saying that I'm going to move even that means that I'm just going to stretch for today that's good enough all right so Geor for people who are listening and not watching I I we didn't mention what kind of dog you're holding up but it is it does look to me like a tiny Ewok she is a bishon FR um and a shitzu mix so there go nub so cute go I know I think that's a a fantastic idea and that's another I remember Jeff Gluckman from muscle balance and posture therapy always used to say the best exercise was just doing things that you would normally have done like even like to the extreme I guess parkour like you want to be Spider-Man but just getting out there and doing and feeding your body all these different kinds of motion right sorry I kind of interrupt you when you talked about tracking your progress yes so what kind of things do we have that we can track our progress so that we know how much we're exercising because if I just track it myself 25 minutes kind of becomes 30 well no or the opposite becomes five I I've done enough you know I don't have to do anymore that feels like a long time but yeah yeah so again this is and if you're W listening not watching this is a collection of stuff that I've tried the Nike fuel band the Jawbone Up and the um Fitbit uh I forget which Fitbit this is flex I think and this is just like you wear it as you're exercising and it counts the amount of steps that you're doing I mean some phones especially if they have co-processor like the iPhone 5S they can do it by themselves you can just install an app but you don't always want your phone with you you don't always want I'm sure you could put a tablet in a backpack if you really had to but you don't need to always want that with you and this is something you can simply strap to your wrist and if your goal again is 10,000 steps in a day you can actually look and it will tell you how many steps you've done in that day and that lets you be accountable to yourself right I also have the shine right here which is a small it's what I like about the shine is that it can it's just a small round disc which will fit into say a necklace it has a little necklace add-on if you want to which it magnetically fits in place which is really cool it has a wristband and it also has a clip and it will tell the time and also track your progress and it will set up goals and it's tracked on your Smartwatch smartphone yeah and that's the really nice thing is that this like and there's other things too right like there's the um what is the scale called again I have it right here I I I love my we things scale yes that's we things it will track your weight now scales are for some people this can be exceptionally demotivating for some people so I you have to make sure that you know yourself really well I like looking at the scale when I'm training and when I'm working out I already know that I'm going to gain some muscle and I'm going to lose a little bit of fat if I'm having a diet that will work that way but I'm doing it mostly for Fitness but the we things SK is nice and that it tracks it and it's beautiful and stylish at the same time and I've had this scale now for two years and it works perfectly still and the nice thing about it is yes you could have a regular scale and painstakingly write down and you know how much I love analog stuff I can barely fill out a check anymore um and write it down yourself but what this does is this scale is connected to the internet and there's an app you can run on your smartphone and it will keep track of all of that for you so all you basically have to do is stand on it and it will do all the document all the the owner is work for you the nice thing of that is that you can track your what you really want to do is you want to get to know your own body and the manner in which you work so what you're doing is you're doing data so you're going to find out if you always gain weight on the weekends you're going to be able to take a look and say okay well this happens every single weekend what am I doing on the weekends that's causing my weight to fluctuate if you're female and it's a monthly thing well you're like okay well it's cyclical and so you can also take a look at where you might be tripping yourself up versus where you do really really well and if it's just emotional if you're an emotional eater and you know you just had a breakup and you gain weight then you understand that under stress or hardship you end up eating more yeah I think that's I think that's something really important because we are also very different so for some people they just want the data they want to look at the numbers they want to know how many calories or how many steps they want numbers that they can look at and and and action I guess you know take action against other people don't have any inclination for numbers they just want to know how they feel does this feel good does it not feel good do I feel accomplished do I not feel accomplished do I feel better do I feel worse and I think the tracking stuff can still benefit you because it you can start to associate how you feel with what the measurements are and then sort of come to come to figure out what your ideal zone is even if you could care less what the number attached to it is and it's nice because you're you're just taking a look at how you're doing it often we forget how much we exercised and how we make it feel if you track all of these things and you know that exercise makes you feel better there's a greater chance that you're going to continue so one of the other things that's interesting is that you know so that I like about this is for example you mentioned some people don't like knowing what their weight is or can be demotivational I think that we're lucky that the technology allows us to have so much in our house now so for example um in the old days you could get you know Richard Simmons or Jane Fonda workout tapes but now now you can actually just stream or download a lot of that kind of stuff into your house you can have the scale and share it only with yourself you can buy home training equipment like if let's say you're you for whatever reason you don't feel comfortable going to a gym you don't have a great self-image or you just you're not comfortable being around people yet uh you can do so much of this at home and I know there's growe bubble issues from other shows that we could that we can get into but if you are just if what you need to get started is privacy there so many options now that let you get started privately right there's apps that have like you know just a seven minute workout or just do these yoga positions start small do something and if you like to follow someone along you can get something so that you have your own personal trainer in the privacy of your own home yeah and I think that's really important as what you said is to start small because some people will look at and go oh I've got to do an hour of this and I've got to do it four times a week or something and it just looks like such a big opt obstacle insurmountable obstacle in front of them yeah I say like start with 15 minutes and this is light cardio so you're not going full out because if I know a lot of people are like but then I don't feel like I've trained but if you go full out and it's a horrible experience you're exceptionally sore the next day it lessens the chances that you're going to continue even if you're not feeling well um you know I often start the day and I just do um 10 wall push-ups or on the counter just a mini T of push-up and some stretching and just five or 10 squats that's it that's just the beginning just to get me started for the day it makes me feel good it increases again your cardiovascular system it's sending all of your body to say listen get ready let's do this and there's a greater chance that you might work out again but even if that's all you do is just get up stretch a little bit move around your arms that's a beginning as long as you're doing more than you did before that's progress so um this is a complete tangent but that gets me thinking about excuse making like like you said um people can exercise really hard the first day and then feel a lot of pain the next day and decide to stop or use that as an excuse to stop or it could be raining outside and they just can't go for the run or they you know oh I I really really have to get to this email now I'm gonna have to put off exercise why do we make those kind of excuses and how can we sort of not do that it's a little bit of cognitive dissidence we don't really we want to make we we lie to ourselves we lie to ourselves all the time the problem is if we believe those lies so exercise is for many people unpleasant if it's amazing for you great go with that so we find Fabulous believable excuses that will say you know what it doesn't feel that bad because I have a reason not to do it so um I could say I'm massively sick today I really am I apologize for that and so I'm not going to do this podcast because that makes me nervous and I might do something wrong what you want to say is that no matter what I'm going to do it even if it's just going to be you know two push-ups two jumping jacks two squats and that's it or even I'm just gonna go to the gym train for five minutes and then leave you want to be really flexible and good to yourself but when you're doing those lies to yourself what I what I often have people do is I have them track why they didn't exercise so say that I would like for someone to exercise three times a week for 15 minutes no one can say they didn't have time so they make great other excuses like I didn't have the right running shoes um you know it was raining outside I only really like to exercise to Pink Floyd and none was I I wiped my music storage right now so then I didn't and so I say well what was the excuse that you didn't exercise for and then is that true or was that just a deflection so you don't exercise and nine times out of 10 you know unless there's an e emergency and you had to go to the hospital it's just because you made a fabulous excuse that didn't make you feel so bad because it was almost believable so that goes back to what you said earlier about momentum and I like I like to believe and tell me if I'm wrong that exercising is habit forming and then not exercising is habit forming like I know when you stop something it becomes easier and easier just to stay stopped so I like I I hope that once you get started it becomes easier and easier to stay doing it well I think that people think that once they start exercising they're just going to continue exercising the entire time and they get this perfectionistic kind of if I stopped one day well I've already ruined everything or if I ate you know six jelly donuts I've already destroyed it so who cares this is about saying you know what I might have a bump here or there but I will get back on that road and continue even if I do so put the bumps of having you know I'm going to have two days of rest or two days where I'm going to you know just be a couch potato for the those days into your training and say that if you know suddenly something happens and you get sick so you're not going to be able to train as much I'm just gonna you know get dressed in my workout gear do just a little bit and then go back to your rest and sleep yeah I mean that's interesting to me because there are apps like you know 100 push-ups 100 sit-ups 100 pull-ups that give you daily goals and again it's a bit of a gamification because if you just have an exercise tape or you just have a bike or you just have a thing you can you can not do it but if you have you know this app which will sound an alarm which will make you physically Tap a button to say you did it I mean yeah you could just lie and tap that button anyway but it's something that sets small incremental goals that get hard not get harder but you know take you along a path and that seems interesting to me I think that sounds interesting but my my worry with it is that you know sometimes it might not because you're not setting it yourself or you might again like when I uh set up my shine I set it to like moderate exercise I never ever met that goal so you also want to say to yourself that it's okay if you have to go back and sayou know what that might have been too much I'm going to go back and instead of doing 15 minutes I'm going to do five minutes or instead of five I'm going to do two and not feel hard on yourself but say I'm happy because I did more than I did the other day or this is as much as I could do today and that's good as long as you're moving a little it's better than not moving at all yeah yeah um no I I I totally get that um you get it but you don't buy it no I I I buy it too it's just that I I like that idea because again you of we often set ourselves up for failure like we we set an impossible goal and we don't reach it we blame ourselves and decide we should never do it again yeah it starts that cycle of self-hatred which you don't want to start we're we're not going to be perfect life happens things change this is something that you're going to want to make make a priority this should be your health and well-being is something that is of primary importance to your own personal well-being you have to make yourself a priority and unfortunately um sleep and exercise um and then eating are often some of the first things that go off of your plate when you're too busy or too stressed or life happens and you want to put those as a higher priority because it does change your complete well-being the way that you look at the world it increase your positivity it sends out good happy hormones lowers the effects of depression it's really really important and I'm not talking about for your body we're talking about also for your brain and for your youth so Georgia can I just interrupt to ask you uh if if I can tell you about something awesome please so this episode is brought to you by Squarespace the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website portfolio and online store for a free trial and 10% off visit squarespace.com Zen and enter offer code Zen checkout a better website sorry a better web starts with your website and I was just thinking based on our conversation that you could for example create a website using Squarespace that all it does is share your whether it's for you or whether it's for your family or whether it's for a club or an activity that you are part of you could create a website that helps keep track of your games or your exercise or your you know your matches or whatever it is that you are doing I like that idea because if you have something that is um beautiful well produced that keeps track of your progress there's a greater chance that you're going to keep doing it when people are tracking their you know say I you know your positive goals towards whatever they may be and you do it in a nice book you're going to look at that and think better of that than not and so it would be nice if you made a nice website for it and you can track it and you don't have to share it with anyone else if you don't want or you could have a little competition site with your friends and see who you get to be yeah and absolutely and if you're thinking that it's too hard to do I mean Squarespace is simple it's easy they've got beautiful designs made by professional designers it's responsive design so it looks great on your computer when you're building it also looks great on your on your tablet on your smartphone it's got drag and drop content so you can put everything exactly where you want it to be if you do know how to code of course you can go in and customize it but you absolutely don't need to it's also got 20 47 support so you can call in you can soorry you can email in you can do a live chat uh you can get all the help you need it starts at $8 a month it if you sign up for a year it includes a free domain name uh it also you know let's say you're in the Fitness business let's say you want to sell terrific Fitness Products to other enthusiasts you can set up a store you don't have to go find some thirdparty service you don't have to worry about Merchant numbers or or any of the stuff you any of the heavy overhead that can go with e-commerce you can just add a store to it get going day one you know what the best thing is though Georgia tell me there you can start a trial with no credit card you can just go in there and build it when you decide you want to sign up you know if it's for you all you do is go to squarespace.com Zen you enter offer code Zen and you get 10% off your first purchase you also support this show which you know is really cool of you um so I want to thank Squarespace for their support I want to thank them for supporting Zen Tech I want to thank you guys for supporting them to support us uh Squarespace a better web starts with your website I like I like the 24-hour support I would need that I I I need 24-hour support to get me motivated that's what I need that's true and talking about that spending some money on your own training is a good idea so if that means hiring a personal trainer to kick you into gear or if you're going to join a club or a gym or whatever it might be sometimes people decide that it's worth more because they've spent a little money on something so it it you know yeah because you say you know what I'm going to get my money's worth out of this and so I'm going to do it people do look towards things that are uh free as less valuable as things that they spend money on it's a kind of interesting philosophy of because we spent that much money then it must be worth more and so if you do that with your Fitness you'll feel that it is more important and you're not going to want to let it go to waste you know what I know the economics of this probably wouldn't work out but I you know what I would love tell me I would love a gym or whatever it is a place that the more you go the less you pay so like you if you go to every session or you never miss something you get money back or you know if you miss a lot of sessions it actually charge you more because you could spend even a thousand bucks upfront and just decide you're lazy like all right fine $1,000 is gone but if you're lazy and you know that every time you're lazy it's going to cost you more and more money I think you would get yourself there no matter what I it's it's very interesting because there is a system for like how you reward yourself which is kind of what you're saying is that if you know I spend $1,000 to the gym and every time I train they give me $5 back until it reaches to maybe $100 to cover the cost of the gym I think that a lot of people would go but after a while because it's so little each time and our laziness might increase we often with rewards need to up the ante to keep us involved though with money I would work for just stickers um the same thing for achievements in a game so you know if you can just find even a reward for yourself after you've trained so if I do this training then I can do X Y or Z that could work out also but I like that idea you know $1 thousand dollar and I pay you every time you come in I think that that would be a great idea I think a lot of people would sign up in the gym would probably make a lot of money from people that just quit anyways it's forget keep the money yeah the lazy people the active people right and unfortunately though I consider myself quite fit I'm kind of one of the people that will not train just to train I don't like running I don't find an enjoyment in that I I actually get a little bit stressed because once I've ran out I have to come back so I'm just angry that I know that however far I've gone I have to redo that distance to get back to my my starting point you know if I had like a a car that drove behind me and would drive me back I might feel better about that but for me I need to join a secondary place in order to keep up it or doing something that I enjoy so I'm not thinking that you know I need like a dodgeball team or or something else to keep me going so that I enjoy what I'm doing you know what geek culture would tell you tell me don't leave anything for the swim back very nice very nice so you mentioned the stickers before and you mentioned rewarding for yourself how do those kinds of systems work because I've always heard about them but I don't quite understand the Dynamics well it's nice if someone else is the person that's G giving you the reward every time you do it but if not you can self-reward it doesn't work as effectively but you could make yourself um you know an application on your phone or your laptop or your tablet in which you know you could make it uh you know as a sheet and every time that you exercise you give yourself something you could even do it the old low Tech way of pen and paper with stickers what if you what is paper um you could do that as well just to kind of let you know and track your progress you could even do it straight up in your calendar and just say trained today so I mean like like what do you do do you say like when I get 20 stickers I can get myself a Sunday or I can go to a movie or I mean like like how how do you have to put that together rewards work the best in that you get something as close to the activity as possible so the nice thing is with exercising you get your first reward which is during the exercise you feel good your vascular your system you're warming up your muscles you're increasing your dopamine you're lower you're increasing your serotonin which makes you feel calm you're getting those happy endorphins that make you feel good that Runner high so that's the first thing and then after you're acknowledging to yourself you're validating I did good today I did something for me I think that everyone you know no one re often people don't want to exercise beforehand but everyone's really happy usually after they did so you want just track that and remember how good that felt I mean no screw that I want a present you can you can definitely do it through whatever present you want um but it shouldn't be too big it shouldn't be like a trip to Cancun it should be something small and incremental like you know every three days or if you do four days a week you get to do something and you can do something small by tracking it which is also a little reward on um an app on your tablet or phone whatever you happen to have with you so that tracks it and then after I don't know what would be your reward Rene what what are you doing because I know that you're training I don't have any I can't I I don't even know how to put a system like that together I have no idea I mentioned Sundays because it seemed you know seemed like something obvious but I'm not good with perhaps counter productive but yes no I'm not good with like I find I'm not good with managerial overhead because I find either I use it to distract myself or take so much time that it takes away from what I actually want to accomplish that I'm trying to manage right right you if the best thing is just to try to make it part of your day you know you wake up in the morning you do you know five jumping jacks five push-ups like something really small that kick starts your metabolism it kickstarts your system and then it's going to be easier to do something else later and then make it just five or 10 minutes you want it to seem insignificant and then you start off there something really really minutely small and then you know always remember to just think about how you're proud of yourself for doing this it's really difficult to stick to something if it's not already in your nature so you want to feel proud and I like to write it down somewhere even if it's just you know a small Mark or you know an emoji on on an application it does not have to be something that you're you're journaling a whole bunch of different stuff to um just something that says you know what I did this for me and then you know you feel a little bit better afterwards so let me ask you this then I'm going to I'm going to throw a curveball in your direction what happens when something goes wrong because life is great at you know you just start getting going and then either you hurt yourself something happens that you know to a loved one that pulls you out of your routine you suddenly have to go on how do you deal with things that make it harder for you to do what you're starting to get used to doing how do you stay motivated well it's GNA happen first you should expect that that's going to happen I think that sometimes people have this idealized I you know thought of what is exercise going to be like it's not going to be like that it's not going to be fabulous you're not going to love it every second of the day but you want to say to yourself that you know no matter what I'm going to start off again small and get back on that horse even if it's you know say that you've uh hurt your ankle then you can work up your upper body so that's a good idea so you might have to change the activity but you don't want to stop doing activity you you should try to do something even if it's just you know three five squats like I don't know anyone that could not fit three to five squats or just wall push-ups or even um arm lifts if you're in bed rest and you cannot get out of bed for whatever reason you can just move your arms or stretch just stretch your body at the beginning of the day if you you know again you don't want to do something that's going to hurt you but just begin with that people often kind of you know get all into it it just seems overwhelming and if you're doing an hour and a half a day that's a lot of intense workout and it seems daunting and then if you go back to five you might feel bad about it so just know that that can happen and that's okay another neat trick is um dress as if you're training what just say I'm just gonna put my training outfit on okay look the part if not fake it just look like you're training and there's a greater chance that you're going to want to train if you hang out with other people that are training you're going to be like oh you know I'm going to fake training a little bit so that I feel like you know the uh group mentality so I'm going to you know do a little light jog here there and that's the beginning well I mean come on we're we're quebecers our culture is famous for buying really nice ski clothes just to stand at the at the ski lodge and chat with you know Attractive people who are actually skiing right but again it's okay as long as you start somewhere at least you know you look the part of that you are going to train and it might just be taking a walk outside it could be just walking up and down the stairs in your home listening to some music and starting to move your body the more you move your body the more limber and flexible it becomes and you are warming up your muscles so one of the things you mentioned is that you found jogging boring and I'm going to I'm willing to bet that over time almost any activity you'll either adapt to it and it won't be as beneficial as before or you'll just get bored of doing it so how important is changing things up and what kind of like do you change things up a lot do you preemptively do it do you change things up only when you get bored how do you keep things fresh this depends on your personality type some people like to stick at something that they're comfortable in tried and true and that's their comfort level other people need to have a change to keep up that feeling of excitement you just want to be honest with yourself just like I know that I am not great for self-motivating I'm better to be in a class or a club or other people are going to be there and people that I don't know too well because then I'm going to slack off a little bit because I know them exceptionally well and I can I can get away with that unfortunately and so you want to know who you are if so if you're getting bored if you think that you're starting to drop off the activity list if you're finding great excuses not to go switch it up a little bit try something different and so one of the other things that I found again because human beings are so remarkable at not doing things is there'll be something like Fitness month where you're like oh I'll wait till Fitness month starts oh it's too late I'm never going to catch up oh I'll I'll start because I want to look great for my wedding or reunion or you know whatever the you know because I'm going to go to the beach oh I waited too long it'll never happen I might as well not do it at all we we often do that you want to do it for yourself and once you've started something just try to keep whatever was working you know doing it you know you want to keep you know again it helps if you're in the mil or other people that are doing it if you can go back to your own you know inspirational journals to that if you look if you're staring at how you were before and then just do a little tiny bit each day so that it becomes part of your day if every morning you stretch there's a greater chance that the next morning that you're going to kind of stretch so you don't want to just do it because it's Fitness month or because you have a wedding you want to do it for yourself and remember how that felt really answers your question fully no no AB it absolutely I just again we're such good excuse makers we're so good at finding any reason not to do things and that I think is always my biggest problem is that and you my father had this saying smart you know dumb people can think of one reason to do something smart people can think of a thousand reasons not to yes and we often do the thing you don't want to do is is believe the lie if you say to yourself you know what I should be exercising but I'm not going to because I don't like what I look like or I I I can't stare at the mirror or I'm too tired or I don't think it's that important just be straight with yourself about that but you really do want to ask yourself the why am I not exercising if you set yourself a goal was the goal too big are you not enjoying it are you too easily distracted if you can't change yourself internally you want to try to change your outside um environment as much as you can so that it makes exercise easier so if it means going to the gym every day and you're going to go there even if you're not going to exercise you want to say okay I'm going to be in that Mill it makes it a little easier if you're going to put right in your living room uh your treadmill or your rowing machine right in front so you have to stare at it constantly at least you know that if you're avoiding it you didn't forget it's there staring at you eyeballing you you know work out you can sort of avoid its attention you just don't look directly at it you you can hide it make it look like something else you can also set alarms for yourself that this is your time to train set a specific spefic time when this is training time and turn off all your Tech except for your inspirational music that's suddenly going to play and start goting you into doing it and I guess I mean if you can afford it you can always get a personal trainer because they are not your friend they're not your spouse or not someone who's going to drop out on you they're not someone you know and again you're you're paying for it like you mentioned earlier but they're going to do as long as you show up they're going to make sure that you do what you need to do you you want to make sure it's something that you like all right so the last sort of question I have for you is we discussed nutrition and sleep and stuff how important is it to do everything at once or is it better to like should I just start exercising or do I really have to start exercising and eating better and sleeping better all at the same time it depends on you I the way that I feel about it is whatever you think that you can do towards making yourself healthier great if you find that overwhelming start with whichever one is easiest and you're going to have the greatest sticking power each one is going to bleed into the other if you're sleeping better you're going to have find it's going to be an easier time in order to exercise if you are you know making sure that you're hydrated it's going to make it easier and if you're choosing to exercise it's going to make sure that you're doing all the others you're going to be able to eat better so I think that they Inspire yourself to be better for all of them but for some people that's too overwhelming it's too much of a change in their system so again it's kind of personalized I like people to do all three and I think that you should monitor all three if possible just to see if you are eating uh 16 putins in a day you're really not going to feel like exercising it's too much what if I do to the poutine Place well that's something but again you're it's it's almost an act of self-hatred at that point in time so you want to be honest what is happening with this and a little bit more you just want to do a little bit more than you did the day before and then you can you don't have to always by the way increase your level of exercise or your cardio you some people feel like they always should be trying to outdo the day before that's not true you want to outdo what you were doing when you were doing no exercise but say that you you know do 15 minutes of light cardio three times a week that's great just continue doing that if that works for you fabulous it doesn't mean that the next time it has to be 20 and 25 and an hour and two hours and three no I I think that's I think that's pretty awesome and can I can I suggest some homework please so because it's Fitness month we have a bunch of people who are trying to all be motivated together um connected le.com our new our new general what's the right word to describe it connected World connected things Internet of Things site is taking a lot of the heavy lifting here because there are so many devices that you can use to help improve uh your health and well-being and stuff like that but we're going to have uh activities and articles and a lot of things a lot of really cool ways to help motivate yourself on all of our sites so whether it's Android Central or crackberry or imore or WP Central whatever Tech you have just go there look for the fitness month stuff and uh engage engage engage I'm gon be like I'll Captain Picard about it and we're all going to be uh training and trying to compete as well and have fun and make this a little bit more enjoyable for everyone so let us know what you do to stick and stay motivated uh go down to our forums check us out take a look and see what we're doing I'm probably going to be sticking my Fitbit on my dog and no game the system um make it run around I've met your dog'll get like three steps a day I know I know it's short legs it's it's probably not going to be traveling very far malfunction most of the day so yeah take a look and let us know what works for you what doesn't what you like and what you don't like to keep yourself a little bit more fit and just a programming note we've got all the video feeds back up so if you haven't already you can subscribe to I mean the best way to to enjoy zenite is to watch the video If You Can we've got that in YouTube It's imore.com sorry youtube.com/ imor video you can also go to iTunes and subscribe to the Zen Tech video podcast and the audio podcast is of course on RSS it's on iTunes and you can download it directly on any of the blog posts uh that the show is attached to um Georgia if people don't know already where can they go to find more about you and more about the stuff that you do I'm r.com and of course on Twitter you can follow me at Georgia uh you can find me at Rene Richie on all the social things you can find me at Mobil Nations I want to once again uh thank squarespace.com for sponsoring the show uh Squarespace is the all-in-one platform all you have to do is go to squarespace.com Zen enter the offer code Zen at checkout and a better web will start with your website thank you Squarespace and thank you everyone who is supporting them to support us have a good evening Georgia you too thank you start training everyone yay okayhi this is Georgia and I'm Renee and welcome to Zen and Tech where we try to Center our inner geek and uh live better more connected lives zenite is brought to you today by Squarespace the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website portfolio and online store for a free trial and 10% off visit squarespace.com Zen and and enter offer code Zen checkout a better web starts with your website Georgia how are you doing I'm good Renee how are you I'm doing very well thank you you know what what it is Fitness month again Fitness month again yes I'm dressed for it we're doing it later this year we did it last time we did it I think in February to kind of do it the New Year's resolution but this year we're doing it uh just to get ready for summer I I like it better I think that everyone's trying to be a little healthier the weather is warm it's nice you can do more things if you're in a cold climate as I am so yeah I like it when we're doing it now yeah so I guess what I wanted to talk to you about tonight was motivation like both getting and staying motivated because that's so that's so difficult that is what everyone talks about everyone would like to exercise more would like to be a little bit more fit but how do you keep at it that's so I I would not like to exercise more I like to be able to take a little pill and instantly become more fit fair but you're not getting the same reaction you really have to do it part of the action is because it is difficult you uh feel more inspired afterwards so now we've talked about this before there really is a difference I don't know if there's a difference or not but there's exercise and there is activity and I know like I work behind a desk it's a standing desk but I work behind a desk for eight hours plus a day kids sit behind a desk at school for eight hours plus a day this is not how humans evolved humans evolve to hunt to gather to farm previously if we you know sat down for eight hours even if we stood around for eight hours we would be considered useless people we're not we're not made we're not made for sitting around for long extended periods of time it is not good for our health now if I even have to reach for the remote to change a channel I'm upset with that there's a problem it used to be that our day was spent uh hunting Gathering doing different things seeking out new environments and or running or hunting Predators which those seems really strenuous and stressful was good for our health it kept us going and now our lives are mainly just sitting around trying to do as little work as possible kind of reminds me of the movie Wall-E where everyone's sitting around on these moving chairs and we've all become like um blob people you know some days after being on the couch for a while I feel like that yeah so we evolve to be these active Dynamic moving creatures and now we leave we live very sedentary Lifestyles which is almost why exercise has become a thing in a normal not a normal world but an ancestral World we'd just be quote unquote exercising all day as part of our everyday activity but now it seems like you really have to make a concerted effort to get your exercise in right it used to be just part of our lifestyle if you had to get water you had to get food you had to travel and so because of that we would because we had to now because we don't really have to the water pretty much comes to us we don't have to do it so we don't because again we're also made to conserve energy which if you can think that there wasn't a lot of food that would be a great survival maintenance but now food is plentiful and we still have this fail safe of trying to conserve energy lots of food want to conserve energy and then we have chocolate all over the place it's really not good for our bodies but also it's not good for our brain so previously our motivator was survival if you wanted to eat if you wanted to not be eaten if you wanted to have a you know a good crop on your farm you had to do all these physical things now instead of that we're left to find our own M motivators and I'll admit it's hard I mean it is so easy to just sit behind the computer and type it is hard to get up and do exercise just for exercise's sake well that's what we're going to try to do we're going to try to give the reasons why you want to exercise plus some things that can help you on the right track and nothing is perfect you have to be really honest with what type of person you are are and then also to know all of the great benefits that you get from exercising which can help you get back on the track if you fall off of it now are are we just going to deal with exercise or are we going to consider like nutrition and that stuff as all part and parcel of living a healthier or better life we're going to deal with all of it for sure but today we're going to focus mainly on staying motivated to exercise but yes we're going to talk about like sleep is all all of this works together in one package but today we're going to mainly focus on I really do have to get up you yes you really do have to get up all right so why is motivation well first why is it hard why is it difficult why do I not just intrinsically want to do this well because as I said before food was scarce and if we wasted energy needlessly we would die off because we're wasting it where we do not need so we are made to take the path easiest for ourselves so that we don't waste energy and increase the chances that we can die off now we've evolved much faster from our subsistence lifestyle into being able to have if you're lucky where you live food that is exceptionally plentiful that is easy to get and there's less and less people that are living below the poverty line depending on of course where you live so now that we have so much food that we want to stay sedentary because we don't want to waste energy and then we are spending time eating because eating also makes us feel happy happy so we're getting a little shot of dopamine which is our little brain's you know happy hormone that feels comforting to us also from eating and then we continue the cycle because the longer that we feel sedentary we also don't get the same amount of dopamine and feeling happy and calm in our brain as well so basically more sitting on a sofa watching Green Arrow do those crazy pull-ups eating Cheetos is uh almost a self-fulfilling Doom than doing those crazy pull-ups myself while he eat Cheetos right because then you're going to be a little angry at yourself for eating so many Cheetos although they are delicious I completely understand why and then you're going to watch more TV and it's going to be more difficult as well a body in motion wants to stay in motion and you're also slowing down your metabolism the problem with slowing down your metabolism is that you are no longer burning as many calories either so eating one bowl of Cheetos may have taken a certain amount of time to burn off off let's say 2 hours now that you've sat on the couch your metabolism has slowed down that means that your body is not converting energy as quickly and so now it might take three hours to burn off that bowl of Cheetos so pretty much what I'm saying is if you exercise you can eat more Cheetos maddening it's mading I tell you so how do I get motivated Georgia how do I want to do this well I think one of the things that people don't realize and I think it's kind of a neat trick is that EX exercise is great for your brain most people don't know this one is it's great for learning so the more that you exercise the better that you can so if you're studying for a test it's actually good to give yourself a 15 20 minute exercise cool down period of time and then study our brains are then primed for taking in knowledge because if we see new surroundings if we're having to hunt or fight our brains are saying oh a lot of dangerous new scenarios we better start learning so that we don't do something that could put us in danger so that's one thing and the second thing is that we hit off all of these great endorphins and we get a little shot of dopamine from exercising so we lower our pain threshold and we feel happier about ourselves so it's and also younger it will keep you feeling and being younger you know if you don't use it you lose it it's true so exercise is good not just for your body but also for your own feeling of sense of self sense of strength and intelligence it's pretty much like a super pill except it comes from push-ups pull-ups or doing any other activity where you have to keep moving so I mean what you say is all fine but again it's one of those those those continuing themes of our show where that's such a future benefit for so much present annoyance I want to know how like what what will help me get going now not like some benefit that you know some abstract benefit in the future okay well first is you have to decide if you really want to do this yes or no I think that a lot of people say I will exercise when it feels right if you're going to wait till it feels right you might as well just not it's not going to feel right this is going to be effort exercise is effort and it is you're not telling me it's it's a lot it's difficult it is difficult there's a reason why people don't want to do it I'm sorry I'm not going to lie to you I would love to say this is all you know happy uh fluffy clouds uh you know rainbows and unicorn let me ask you this let's let's say I'm loath to exercise I I believe and you tell me if I'm wrong that I can Jedi mind trick myself into this that I can change the parameters of the equation so for example if I don't want to exercise maybe I want to play video games and maybe I could do something like get I don't know an Xbox and connect and get a dancing game and then oh I happen to be getting exercise but I'm actually playing a video game exactly so what you can do is once you figure out what works for you and what doesn't game the system system be really honest with yourself so yeah make exercise fun instead of making it something that seems contrived and you're just standing in one place staring at a blank wall if you have much more fun playing Dance Dance Revolution go do that you're moving you're feeling silly you're racking up points you can um play against your friends humiliate each other learn moves that will make your children embarrassed to know you I'm doing the Superman son I'm doing the Superman I've done that way too many times it's it's just make it enjoyable and if you're not motivated to do it alone I'm not great for exercising on my own I'm I'm fully trained to be able to do that I join a club put okay hold I want to get more into this fun thing first sure before you before we get on to other people so we have we have video games and there are video games that actually require like you to move around right like there was um what was the original Nintendo won the Wii right and they had the sports games and there was boxing and there was tennis and now we have a lot of fun yeah now we have the the connect thing and that's sort of I find that interesting because it's got a little bit of competitiveness I guess especially if you do have someone else there but uh maybe even it's online maybe it's even beating your own score but that seems to me like a really fun like like fun could be a a way of getting me to do something that I wouldn't do just on my own exactly you get to enjoy you can play a video game you are racking up points and you're moving because the the cool part about playing a video game is that it's going to force you to move because you want to get your score even though your body is saying nah I don't really want to and that's the difference between doing say a workout video which is also really great but you're watching the person and you might say well you know what no one's going to track me if I go a little bit LAX on this movement or not with a video game you're going to get shut out if you don't pass the score so that motivates you maybe to stretch a little bit further jump a little bit higher reach a little bit more to the side and so you're going to probably get a little bit more of a workout and hopefully you'll enjoy it more as well yeah and I think it's important because video games traditionally up until recently they have all been about um sitting down with a controller in front of something which is back to the sitting down sort of a problem you're exercising but just your thumbs and fingers yeah and like maybe you have you know titanically strong thumbs but this new way of stuff I think is really exciting and really interesting and it's also if you don't already have something maybe an excuse to get that video game system you've been been looking for just if you if the price of getting it is maybe that you have to do these highly active games as well right and you can enjoy it you can play games to your friends you can bring friends over you're also listening to music which is great for a motivator and or the the video game sounds and you're motivated to keep going even though your body might say you know what I want to take a break so is strong exactly so are there other ways to have to make it more fun to make it an activity that you enjoy rather than dread like I know some people respond to music like if you have if you have great stuff on your phone or or or your your mp3 player or even if you subscribe to a service like son like uh sorry like sza or um I'm so terrible at these Ario or Spotify one of those things music seems to me to be something that just drives you it inspires you you what the great part about music is that you're not thinking about how much I'm suffering it can move you to Greater Heights when you're running or jumping or deciding to play whatever sport you want to play it helps like it's almost like your background theme music so it works great in movies and it also works great in real life now I have a couple suggestions for music if I may sure please so one is I mean it depends on how you do it like if you are if you want headsets uh because you're either jogging out on a street or you're at a gym or you're some place where you can't like your music can't be loud it has to be something just inclusive for you get really good sports headsets because a lot of the headsets that come with stuff a lot of the ones that are commonly sold are not meant for intense activity and they'll fall out or they won't fit or they'll drive you nuts in a way that distracts you from your exercise but there are headsets that either Loop over your ear or specially made I mean Georgia you and I have been to uh shows like mac world or CES where people do backflips wearing headset and there's stuff that is specifically designed for that that I think is really good to have they're amazing and there's headsets now that are exceptionally comfortable and won't fall out when you're doing almost anything plus if you're more inclined to water sports you can get I think overboard and some other companies make uh ear phones that are completely waterproof so and as well as a pack that you can put your MPC player or your smartphone into so that you can listen to your music while you're swimming or I don't know if wakeboarding would be dangerous with with your um earphones in but whatever you really enjoy to do kite surfing I would love to do kite surfing so another recommendation is I I just got a rowing machine because you know I I I hurt myself I I have a detached ligament in my or tendon or something in my ankle and I can't do the the Brazilian jiujitsu that I used to do a lot so I got a rowing machine because it seemed it seemed like a good exercise and something that I could do even with a messed up Ankle but it's loud enough that I can't hear just you know a tablet or or a phone or MP3 player on its own but it's also at home so I don't really have to wear uh headphones which kind of Drive kind of drive me nuts so I'm using a uh a jam box a Jawbone jam box and they different manufacturers beats makes the pill and they're all sorts of really good um box like this and it's a little Bluetooth player and you just put it somewhere close by and it makes you know whether you're listening to music I don't listen to a lot of music I watch a lot of TV and stuff so I'll watch Netflix or iTunes or something while I'm exercising it also helps me keep track of the amount of time I'm doing it because you know there's natural breaks in the show where commercials used to be right um and this is loud enough that I can hear it even over the noise of the machine um and even if I'm doing body weight training or something there's just you know your breathing gets heavier your you get a little bit of a pounding in your head it's it's nice to have Ambient sound uh that you can really enjoy while you're working out right and it just keeps you keeps you going so it's nice to have some music that is yours that you've chosen that you find that's motivating I have uh on my phone just a set of tracks that's just for you know fight music so I use that for whenever I'm training and it just keeps me going which I really like I have a Sono system at home and I would love to just have an extra play one speaker in my workout room but they don't support AirPlay I'm GNA just complain about that again just for the you should you should they should they should support that they should absolutely support that all right so Georgie you mentioned before and you mentioned here like wakeboarding and and water activities and stuff that you can do with other people so I know there are some people who are incredibly self-disciplined who just say I'm going to exercise and that single act of will makes some exercise but there's something to be said and you know when we did Brazilian jiu-jitsu you did not want to be the one person who was behind everybody else it was again an ego motivator a group motivator and that seems very powerful for some people too right I'm I'm not great for being self-motivated though I'm fully trained to be able to do it and if I'm teaching a class for other people I will train and train exceptionally hard so I put my money where my m is and I join a club and do something that the activity is fun and I want to do so uh we're planning to start archery not a high physical fitness still in cardio though I think that I'm going to get a lot of arm strength in order to do it uh and also I do kickboxing and Jiu-Jitsu at a secondary location one is because I have that group mentality I have other people there they're going to be waiting for me and hoping that I'm coming to train so I'm going to feel bad if I let them down the second thing is that I have a teacher that's there and saying hey work harder what are you doing and I enjoy that so it appeals to kind of my type A personality of wanting to be achievement oriented and there's a whole bunch of goals that I'm trying to hit in whatever class I want to do it makes it a little bit more fun you're exercising without thinking about exercising you're thinking about getting good at a skill which I really like yeah and the one thing that I like about that too is it's almost like the video game thing where you become motivated to succeed like Brazilian jiu-jitsu if you're on an exercise bike and you get tired you can stop if you're grappling and you get tired someone's going to choke you out or try to hurt your arm I mean you have a lot of motivation to keep going if you're playing soccer I mean Sports in general Combat Sports yes but Sports in general are great because you know your team depends on you or that someone else is going to get a goal there's all sorts of things that force you to keep going even beyond that where you know your lazy muscle engages exactly exactly um you can also choose to have other people that are wanting to exercise to go with you you can enjoy your time with your friends chat while if you're choosing to to jog or to train you're with each other and you're keeping each other motivated and hopefully supportive to each other as well which is really really nice yeah so you already have the thing like you know gamify it a little bit make it into a game play and now you have adding a second element to it so if you know that you on your own are not responsible enough or or disciplined enough to do it you add you know the other person who's going to sort of make sure that you do it and sort of a third element for me is always accountability uh like if if there's like no if there's a nebulous goal or no nothing keeping track of it it seems easy to cheat the system but we have a whole bunch of Technology now that's a really cool way even if you don't have somebody else even if you don't want to get like let's say video games annoy you or whatever you have ways technological ways of being accountable to yourself um can I go through a couple of them oh okay sure uh so like for example I have a bunch of different um Fitness bands here there's the Jawbone uh up there's the Nike fuel band and there's the um Fitbit and what these do is these measure steps so let's say you you you don't have a video game you don't have friends but you have a goal you decide to do 10 10,000 steps a day this will let you measure that you've done them and you can see and a lot of the apps will do a graph like red is you haven't even done a thousand steps you lazy whatever such and such but then you get to Yellow you get to Green you see your progress so it's gamified in a different way George is that a dog sorry okay continue all right I'm gonna ask about that dog again later yeah I was supposed to be with the go with a friend okay so no so let's do that let's go back to that for second okay so your friend is now a small Ewok like creature well some people will say to me Georgia I don't have any friends or they don't want to train and so you can just bring your pet bring your pet to train with you so they can inspire you uh make it a little bit more fun if you have social anxiety and you're worried about training in front of other people going to a dog park or bringing a ball and running around with whatever pet you might have Geral cat dog um it makes it a little bit more fun and you don't feel that bad because you're playing ball with your dog as you run around this is that hi Mila that's pretty awesome because and a sort of play I guess that fits in with the other thing is you don't have to play electronically if you have a dog you can run with your dog you can go to the park with your dog if you have kids you can go you know play catch with your kids play Touch football with your kids uh you can even go to a go do Jungle Gym stuff there's all sorts of physical play activity you can do definitely and just want to make sure that it makes it a little bit less um I think that people look at exercise and think that it has to be really really strenuous and really hard on the system which it doesn't start small small light easy that just enjoy a little bit of saying that I'm going to move even that means that I'm just going to stretch for today that's good enough all right so Geor for people who are listening and not watching I I we didn't mention what kind of dog you're holding up but it is it does look to me like a tiny Ewok she is a bishon FR um and a shitzu mix so there go nub so cute go I know I think that's a a fantastic idea and that's another I remember Jeff Gluckman from muscle balance and posture therapy always used to say the best exercise was just doing things that you would normally have done like even like to the extreme I guess parkour like you want to be Spider-Man but just getting out there and doing and feeding your body all these different kinds of motion right sorry I kind of interrupt you when you talked about tracking your progress yes so what kind of things do we have that we can track our progress so that we know how much we're exercising because if I just track it myself 25 minutes kind of becomes 30 well no or the opposite becomes five I I've done enough you know I don't have to do anymore that feels like a long time but yeah yeah so again this is and if you're W listening not watching this is a collection of stuff that I've tried the Nike fuel band the Jawbone Up and the um Fitbit uh I forget which Fitbit this is flex I think and this is just like you wear it as you're exercising and it counts the amount of steps that you're doing I mean some phones especially if they have co-processor like the iPhone 5S they can do it by themselves you can just install an app but you don't always want your phone with you you don't always want I'm sure you could put a tablet in a backpack if you really had to but you don't need to always want that with you and this is something you can simply strap to your wrist and if your goal again is 10,000 steps in a day you can actually look and it will tell you how many steps you've done in that day and that lets you be accountable to yourself right I also have the shine right here which is a small it's what I like about the shine is that it can it's just a small round disc which will fit into say a necklace it has a little necklace add-on if you want to which it magnetically fits in place which is really cool it has a wristband and it also has a clip and it will tell the time and also track your progress and it will set up goals and it's tracked on your Smartwatch smartphone yeah and that's the really nice thing is that this like and there's other things too right like there's the um what is the scale called again I have it right here I I I love my we things scale yes that's we things it will track your weight now scales are for some people this can be exceptionally demotivating for some people so I you have to make sure that you know yourself really well I like looking at the scale when I'm training and when I'm working out I already know that I'm going to gain some muscle and I'm going to lose a little bit of fat if I'm having a diet that will work that way but I'm doing it mostly for Fitness but the we things SK is nice and that it tracks it and it's beautiful and stylish at the same time and I've had this scale now for two years and it works perfectly still and the nice thing about it is yes you could have a regular scale and painstakingly write down and you know how much I love analog stuff I can barely fill out a check anymore um and write it down yourself but what this does is this scale is connected to the internet and there's an app you can run on your smartphone and it will keep track of all of that for you so all you basically have to do is stand on it and it will do all the document all the the owner is work for you the nice thing of that is that you can track your what you really want to do is you want to get to know your own body and the manner in which you work so what you're doing is you're doing data so you're going to find out if you always gain weight on the weekends you're going to be able to take a look and say okay well this happens every single weekend what am I doing on the weekends that's causing my weight to fluctuate if you're female and it's a monthly thing well you're like okay well it's cyclical and so you can also take a look at where you might be tripping yourself up versus where you do really really well and if it's just emotional if you're an emotional eater and you know you just had a breakup and you gain weight then you understand that under stress or hardship you end up eating more yeah I think that's I think that's something really important because we are also very different so for some people they just want the data they want to look at the numbers they want to know how many calories or how many steps they want numbers that they can look at and and and action I guess you know take action against other people don't have any inclination for numbers they just want to know how they feel does this feel good does it not feel good do I feel accomplished do I not feel accomplished do I feel better do I feel worse and I think the tracking stuff can still benefit you because it you can start to associate how you feel with what the measurements are and then sort of come to come to figure out what your ideal zone is even if you could care less what the number attached to it is and it's nice because you're you're just taking a look at how you're doing it often we forget how much we exercised and how we make it feel if you track all of these things and you know that exercise makes you feel better there's a greater chance that you're going to continue so one of the other things that's interesting is that you know so that I like about this is for example you mentioned some people don't like knowing what their weight is or can be demotivational I think that we're lucky that the technology allows us to have so much in our house now so for example um in the old days you could get you know Richard Simmons or Jane Fonda workout tapes but now now you can actually just stream or download a lot of that kind of stuff into your house you can have the scale and share it only with yourself you can buy home training equipment like if let's say you're you for whatever reason you don't feel comfortable going to a gym you don't have a great self-image or you just you're not comfortable being around people yet uh you can do so much of this at home and I know there's growe bubble issues from other shows that we could that we can get into but if you are just if what you need to get started is privacy there so many options now that let you get started privately right there's apps that have like you know just a seven minute workout or just do these yoga positions start small do something and if you like to follow someone along you can get something so that you have your own personal trainer in the privacy of your own home yeah and I think that's really important as what you said is to start small because some people will look at and go oh I've got to do an hour of this and I've got to do it four times a week or something and it just looks like such a big opt obstacle insurmountable obstacle in front of them yeah I say like start with 15 minutes and this is light cardio so you're not going full out because if I know a lot of people are like but then I don't feel like I've trained but if you go full out and it's a horrible experience you're exceptionally sore the next day it lessens the chances that you're going to continue even if you're not feeling well um you know I often start the day and I just do um 10 wall push-ups or on the counter just a mini T of push-up and some stretching and just five or 10 squats that's it that's just the beginning just to get me started for the day it makes me feel good it increases again your cardiovascular system it's sending all of your body to say listen get ready let's do this and there's a greater chance that you might work out again but even if that's all you do is just get up stretch a little bit move around your arms that's a beginning as long as you're doing more than you did before that's progress so um this is a complete tangent but that gets me thinking about excuse making like like you said um people can exercise really hard the first day and then feel a lot of pain the next day and decide to stop or use that as an excuse to stop or it could be raining outside and they just can't go for the run or they you know oh I I really really have to get to this email now I'm gonna have to put off exercise why do we make those kind of excuses and how can we sort of not do that it's a little bit of cognitive dissidence we don't really we want to make we we lie to ourselves we lie to ourselves all the time the problem is if we believe those lies so exercise is for many people unpleasant if it's amazing for you great go with that so we find Fabulous believable excuses that will say you know what it doesn't feel that bad because I have a reason not to do it so um I could say I'm massively sick today I really am I apologize for that and so I'm not going to do this podcast because that makes me nervous and I might do something wrong what you want to say is that no matter what I'm going to do it even if it's just going to be you know two push-ups two jumping jacks two squats and that's it or even I'm just gonna go to the gym train for five minutes and then leave you want to be really flexible and good to yourself but when you're doing those lies to yourself what I what I often have people do is I have them track why they didn't exercise so say that I would like for someone to exercise three times a week for 15 minutes no one can say they didn't have time so they make great other excuses like I didn't have the right running shoes um you know it was raining outside I only really like to exercise to Pink Floyd and none was I I wiped my music storage right now so then I didn't and so I say well what was the excuse that you didn't exercise for and then is that true or was that just a deflection so you don't exercise and nine times out of 10 you know unless there's an e emergency and you had to go to the hospital it's just because you made a fabulous excuse that didn't make you feel so bad because it was almost believable so that goes back to what you said earlier about momentum and I like I like to believe and tell me if I'm wrong that exercising is habit forming and then not exercising is habit forming like I know when you stop something it becomes easier and easier just to stay stopped so I like I I hope that once you get started it becomes easier and easier to stay doing it well I think that people think that once they start exercising they're just going to continue exercising the entire time and they get this perfectionistic kind of if I stopped one day well I've already ruined everything or if I ate you know six jelly donuts I've already destroyed it so who cares this is about saying you know what I might have a bump here or there but I will get back on that road and continue even if I do so put the bumps of having you know I'm going to have two days of rest or two days where I'm going to you know just be a couch potato for the those days into your training and say that if you know suddenly something happens and you get sick so you're not going to be able to train as much I'm just gonna you know get dressed in my workout gear do just a little bit and then go back to your rest and sleep yeah I mean that's interesting to me because there are apps like you know 100 push-ups 100 sit-ups 100 pull-ups that give you daily goals and again it's a bit of a gamification because if you just have an exercise tape or you just have a bike or you just have a thing you can you can not do it but if you have you know this app which will sound an alarm which will make you physically Tap a button to say you did it I mean yeah you could just lie and tap that button anyway but it's something that sets small incremental goals that get hard not get harder but you know take you along a path and that seems interesting to me I think that sounds interesting but my my worry with it is that you know sometimes it might not because you're not setting it yourself or you might again like when I uh set up my shine I set it to like moderate exercise I never ever met that goal so you also want to say to yourself that it's okay if you have to go back and sayou know what that might have been too much I'm going to go back and instead of doing 15 minutes I'm going to do five minutes or instead of five I'm going to do two and not feel hard on yourself but say I'm happy because I did more than I did the other day or this is as much as I could do today and that's good as long as you're moving a little it's better than not moving at all yeah yeah um no I I I totally get that um you get it but you don't buy it no I I I buy it too it's just that I I like that idea because again you of we often set ourselves up for failure like we we set an impossible goal and we don't reach it we blame ourselves and decide we should never do it again yeah it starts that cycle of self-hatred which you don't want to start we're we're not going to be perfect life happens things change this is something that you're going to want to make make a priority this should be your health and well-being is something that is of primary importance to your own personal well-being you have to make yourself a priority and unfortunately um sleep and exercise um and then eating are often some of the first things that go off of your plate when you're too busy or too stressed or life happens and you want to put those as a higher priority because it does change your complete well-being the way that you look at the world it increase your positivity it sends out good happy hormones lowers the effects of depression it's really really important and I'm not talking about for your body we're talking about also for your brain and for your youth so Georgia can I just interrupt to ask you uh if if I can tell you about something awesome please so this episode is brought to you by Squarespace the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website portfolio and online store for a free trial and 10% off visit squarespace.com Zen and enter offer code Zen checkout a better website sorry a better web starts with your website and I was just thinking based on our conversation that you could for example create a website using Squarespace that all it does is share your whether it's for you or whether it's for your family or whether it's for a club or an activity that you are part of you could create a website that helps keep track of your games or your exercise or your you know your matches or whatever it is that you are doing I like that idea because if you have something that is um beautiful well produced that keeps track of your progress there's a greater chance that you're going to keep doing it when people are tracking their you know say I you know your positive goals towards whatever they may be and you do it in a nice book you're going to look at that and think better of that than not and so it would be nice if you made a nice website for it and you can track it and you don't have to share it with anyone else if you don't want or you could have a little competition site with your friends and see who you get to be yeah and absolutely and if you're thinking that it's too hard to do I mean Squarespace is simple it's easy they've got beautiful designs made by professional designers it's responsive design so it looks great on your computer when you're building it also looks great on your on your tablet on your smartphone it's got drag and drop content so you can put everything exactly where you want it to be if you do know how to code of course you can go in and customize it but you absolutely don't need to it's also got 20 47 support so you can call in you can soorry you can email in you can do a live chat uh you can get all the help you need it starts at $8 a month it if you sign up for a year it includes a free domain name uh it also you know let's say you're in the Fitness business let's say you want to sell terrific Fitness Products to other enthusiasts you can set up a store you don't have to go find some thirdparty service you don't have to worry about Merchant numbers or or any of the stuff you any of the heavy overhead that can go with e-commerce you can just add a store to it get going day one you know what the best thing is though Georgia tell me there you can start a trial with no credit card you can just go in there and build it when you decide you want to sign up you know if it's for you all you do is go to squarespace.com Zen you enter offer code Zen and you get 10% off your first purchase you also support this show which you know is really cool of you um so I want to thank Squarespace for their support I want to thank them for supporting Zen Tech I want to thank you guys for supporting them to support us uh Squarespace a better web starts with your website I like I like the 24-hour support I would need that I I I need 24-hour support to get me motivated that's what I need that's true and talking about that spending some money on your own training is a good idea so if that means hiring a personal trainer to kick you into gear or if you're going to join a club or a gym or whatever it might be sometimes people decide that it's worth more because they've spent a little money on something so it it you know yeah because you say you know what I'm going to get my money's worth out of this and so I'm going to do it people do look towards things that are uh free as less valuable as things that they spend money on it's a kind of interesting philosophy of because we spent that much money then it must be worth more and so if you do that with your Fitness you'll feel that it is more important and you're not going to want to let it go to waste you know what I know the economics of this probably wouldn't work out but I you know what I would love tell me I would love a gym or whatever it is a place that the more you go the less you pay so like you if you go to every session or you never miss something you get money back or you know if you miss a lot of sessions it actually charge you more because you could spend even a thousand bucks upfront and just decide you're lazy like all right fine $1,000 is gone but if you're lazy and you know that every time you're lazy it's going to cost you more and more money I think you would get yourself there no matter what I it's it's very interesting because there is a system for like how you reward yourself which is kind of what you're saying is that if you know I spend $1,000 to the gym and every time I train they give me $5 back until it reaches to maybe $100 to cover the cost of the gym I think that a lot of people would go but after a while because it's so little each time and our laziness might increase we often with rewards need to up the ante to keep us involved though with money I would work for just stickers um the same thing for achievements in a game so you know if you can just find even a reward for yourself after you've trained so if I do this training then I can do X Y or Z that could work out also but I like that idea you know $1 thousand dollar and I pay you every time you come in I think that that would be a great idea I think a lot of people would sign up in the gym would probably make a lot of money from people that just quit anyways it's forget keep the money yeah the lazy people the active people right and unfortunately though I consider myself quite fit I'm kind of one of the people that will not train just to train I don't like running I don't find an enjoyment in that I I actually get a little bit stressed because once I've ran out I have to come back so I'm just angry that I know that however far I've gone I have to redo that distance to get back to my my starting point you know if I had like a a car that drove behind me and would drive me back I might feel better about that but for me I need to join a secondary place in order to keep up it or doing something that I enjoy so I'm not thinking that you know I need like a dodgeball team or or something else to keep me going so that I enjoy what I'm doing you know what geek culture would tell you tell me don't leave anything for the swim back very nice very nice so you mentioned the stickers before and you mentioned rewarding for yourself how do those kinds of systems work because I've always heard about them but I don't quite understand the Dynamics well it's nice if someone else is the person that's G giving you the reward every time you do it but if not you can self-reward it doesn't work as effectively but you could make yourself um you know an application on your phone or your laptop or your tablet in which you know you could make it uh you know as a sheet and every time that you exercise you give yourself something you could even do it the old low Tech way of pen and paper with stickers what if you what is paper um you could do that as well just to kind of let you know and track your progress you could even do it straight up in your calendar and just say trained today so I mean like like what do you do do you say like when I get 20 stickers I can get myself a Sunday or I can go to a movie or I mean like like how how do you have to put that together rewards work the best in that you get something as close to the activity as possible so the nice thing is with exercising you get your first reward which is during the exercise you feel good your vascular your system you're warming up your muscles you're increasing your dopamine you're lower you're increasing your serotonin which makes you feel calm you're getting those happy endorphins that make you feel good that Runner high so that's the first thing and then after you're acknowledging to yourself you're validating I did good today I did something for me I think that everyone you know no one re often people don't want to exercise beforehand but everyone's really happy usually after they did so you want just track that and remember how good that felt I mean no screw that I want a present you can you can definitely do it through whatever present you want um but it shouldn't be too big it shouldn't be like a trip to Cancun it should be something small and incremental like you know every three days or if you do four days a week you get to do something and you can do something small by tracking it which is also a little reward on um an app on your tablet or phone whatever you happen to have with you so that tracks it and then after I don't know what would be your reward Rene what what are you doing because I know that you're training I don't have any I can't I I don't even know how to put a system like that together I have no idea I mentioned Sundays because it seemed you know seemed like something obvious but I'm not good with perhaps counter productive but yes no I'm not good with like I find I'm not good with managerial overhead because I find either I use it to distract myself or take so much time that it takes away from what I actually want to accomplish that I'm trying to manage right right you if the best thing is just to try to make it part of your day you know you wake up in the morning you do you know five jumping jacks five push-ups like something really small that kick starts your metabolism it kickstarts your system and then it's going to be easier to do something else later and then make it just five or 10 minutes you want it to seem insignificant and then you start off there something really really minutely small and then you know always remember to just think about how you're proud of yourself for doing this it's really difficult to stick to something if it's not already in your nature so you want to feel proud and I like to write it down somewhere even if it's just you know a small Mark or you know an emoji on on an application it does not have to be something that you're you're journaling a whole bunch of different stuff to um just something that says you know what I did this for me and then you know you feel a little bit better afterwards so let me ask you this then I'm going to I'm going to throw a curveball in your direction what happens when something goes wrong because life is great at you know you just start getting going and then either you hurt yourself something happens that you know to a loved one that pulls you out of your routine you suddenly have to go on how do you deal with things that make it harder for you to do what you're starting to get used to doing how do you stay motivated well it's GNA happen first you should expect that that's going to happen I think that sometimes people have this idealized I you know thought of what is exercise going to be like it's not going to be like that it's not going to be fabulous you're not going to love it every second of the day but you want to say to yourself that you know no matter what I'm going to start off again small and get back on that horse even if it's you know say that you've uh hurt your ankle then you can work up your upper body so that's a good idea so you might have to change the activity but you don't want to stop doing activity you you should try to do something even if it's just you know three five squats like I don't know anyone that could not fit three to five squats or just wall push-ups or even um arm lifts if you're in bed rest and you cannot get out of bed for whatever reason you can just move your arms or stretch just stretch your body at the beginning of the day if you you know again you don't want to do something that's going to hurt you but just begin with that people often kind of you know get all into it it just seems overwhelming and if you're doing an hour and a half a day that's a lot of intense workout and it seems daunting and then if you go back to five you might feel bad about it so just know that that can happen and that's okay another neat trick is um dress as if you're training what just say I'm just gonna put my training outfit on okay look the part if not fake it just look like you're training and there's a greater chance that you're going to want to train if you hang out with other people that are training you're going to be like oh you know I'm going to fake training a little bit so that I feel like you know the uh group mentality so I'm going to you know do a little light jog here there and that's the beginning well I mean come on we're we're quebecers our culture is famous for buying really nice ski clothes just to stand at the at the ski lodge and chat with you know Attractive people who are actually skiing right but again it's okay as long as you start somewhere at least you know you look the part of that you are going to train and it might just be taking a walk outside it could be just walking up and down the stairs in your home listening to some music and starting to move your body the more you move your body the more limber and flexible it becomes and you are warming up your muscles so one of the things you mentioned is that you found jogging boring and I'm going to I'm willing to bet that over time almost any activity you'll either adapt to it and it won't be as beneficial as before or you'll just get bored of doing it so how important is changing things up and what kind of like do you change things up a lot do you preemptively do it do you change things up only when you get bored how do you keep things fresh this depends on your personality type some people like to stick at something that they're comfortable in tried and true and that's their comfort level other people need to have a change to keep up that feeling of excitement you just want to be honest with yourself just like I know that I am not great for self-motivating I'm better to be in a class or a club or other people are going to be there and people that I don't know too well because then I'm going to slack off a little bit because I know them exceptionally well and I can I can get away with that unfortunately and so you want to know who you are if so if you're getting bored if you think that you're starting to drop off the activity list if you're finding great excuses not to go switch it up a little bit try something different and so one of the other things that I found again because human beings are so remarkable at not doing things is there'll be something like Fitness month where you're like oh I'll wait till Fitness month starts oh it's too late I'm never going to catch up oh I'll I'll start because I want to look great for my wedding or reunion or you know whatever the you know because I'm going to go to the beach oh I waited too long it'll never happen I might as well not do it at all we we often do that you want to do it for yourself and once you've started something just try to keep whatever was working you know doing it you know you want to keep you know again it helps if you're in the mil or other people that are doing it if you can go back to your own you know inspirational journals to that if you look if you're staring at how you were before and then just do a little tiny bit each day so that it becomes part of your day if every morning you stretch there's a greater chance that the next morning that you're going to kind of stretch so you don't want to just do it because it's Fitness month or because you have a wedding you want to do it for yourself and remember how that felt really answers your question fully no no AB it absolutely I just again we're such good excuse makers we're so good at finding any reason not to do things and that I think is always my biggest problem is that and you my father had this saying smart you know dumb people can think of one reason to do something smart people can think of a thousand reasons not to yes and we often do the thing you don't want to do is is believe the lie if you say to yourself you know what I should be exercising but I'm not going to because I don't like what I look like or I I I can't stare at the mirror or I'm too tired or I don't think it's that important just be straight with yourself about that but you really do want to ask yourself the why am I not exercising if you set yourself a goal was the goal too big are you not enjoying it are you too easily distracted if you can't change yourself internally you want to try to change your outside um environment as much as you can so that it makes exercise easier so if it means going to the gym every day and you're going to go there even if you're not going to exercise you want to say okay I'm going to be in that Mill it makes it a little easier if you're going to put right in your living room uh your treadmill or your rowing machine right in front so you have to stare at it constantly at least you know that if you're avoiding it you didn't forget it's there staring at you eyeballing you you know work out you can sort of avoid its attention you just don't look directly at it you you can hide it make it look like something else you can also set alarms for yourself that this is your time to train set a specific spefic time when this is training time and turn off all your Tech except for your inspirational music that's suddenly going to play and start goting you into doing it and I guess I mean if you can afford it you can always get a personal trainer because they are not your friend they're not your spouse or not someone who's going to drop out on you they're not someone you know and again you're you're paying for it like you mentioned earlier but they're going to do as long as you show up they're going to make sure that you do what you need to do you you want to make sure it's something that you like all right so the last sort of question I have for you is we discussed nutrition and sleep and stuff how important is it to do everything at once or is it better to like should I just start exercising or do I really have to start exercising and eating better and sleeping better all at the same time it depends on you I the way that I feel about it is whatever you think that you can do towards making yourself healthier great if you find that overwhelming start with whichever one is easiest and you're going to have the greatest sticking power each one is going to bleed into the other if you're sleeping better you're going to have find it's going to be an easier time in order to exercise if you are you know making sure that you're hydrated it's going to make it easier and if you're choosing to exercise it's going to make sure that you're doing all the others you're going to be able to eat better so I think that they Inspire yourself to be better for all of them but for some people that's too overwhelming it's too much of a change in their system so again it's kind of personalized I like people to do all three and I think that you should monitor all three if possible just to see if you are eating uh 16 putins in a day you're really not going to feel like exercising it's too much what if I do to the poutine Place well that's something but again you're it's it's almost an act of self-hatred at that point in time so you want to be honest what is happening with this and a little bit more you just want to do a little bit more than you did the day before and then you can you don't have to always by the way increase your level of exercise or your cardio you some people feel like they always should be trying to outdo the day before that's not true you want to outdo what you were doing when you were doing no exercise but say that you you know do 15 minutes of light cardio three times a week that's great just continue doing that if that works for you fabulous it doesn't mean that the next time it has to be 20 and 25 and an hour and two hours and three no I I think that's I think that's pretty awesome and can I can I suggest some homework please so because it's Fitness month we have a bunch of people who are trying to all be motivated together um connected le.com our new our new general what's the right word to describe it connected World connected things Internet of Things site is taking a lot of the heavy lifting here because there are so many devices that you can use to help improve uh your health and well-being and stuff like that but we're going to have uh activities and articles and a lot of things a lot of really cool ways to help motivate yourself on all of our sites so whether it's Android Central or crackberry or imore or WP Central whatever Tech you have just go there look for the fitness month stuff and uh engage engage engage I'm gon be like I'll Captain Picard about it and we're all going to be uh training and trying to compete as well and have fun and make this a little bit more enjoyable for everyone so let us know what you do to stick and stay motivated uh go down to our forums check us out take a look and see what we're doing I'm probably going to be sticking my Fitbit on my dog and no game the system um make it run around I've met your dog'll get like three steps a day I know I know it's short legs it's it's probably not going to be traveling very far malfunction most of the day so yeah take a look and let us know what works for you what doesn't what you like and what you don't like to keep yourself a little bit more fit and just a programming note we've got all the video feeds back up so if you haven't already you can subscribe to I mean the best way to to enjoy zenite is to watch the video If You Can we've got that in YouTube It's imore.com sorry youtube.com/ imor video you can also go to iTunes and subscribe to the Zen Tech video podcast and the audio podcast is of course on RSS it's on iTunes and you can download it directly on any of the blog posts uh that the show is attached to um Georgia if people don't know already where can they go to find more about you and more about the stuff that you do I'm r.com and of course on Twitter you can follow me at Georgia uh you can find me at Rene Richie on all the social things you can find me at Mobil Nations I want to once again uh thank squarespace.com for sponsoring the show uh Squarespace is the all-in-one platform all you have to do is go to squarespace.com Zen enter the offer code Zen at checkout and a better web will start with your website thank you Squarespace and thank you everyone who is supporting them to support us have a good evening Georgia you too thank you start training everyone yay okay\n"