Exercise Habits for Life Success

Exercise habits are important in general, but the other areas of life that they can positively contribute to make them even more critical!

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Just because you were a college athlete, it doesn't mean that having exercise as part of your regular routine will be a lifelong simple thing to do. If you lose incorporating movement into your daily life, it is possible to get it back!

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Having healthy exercise habits isn't a use it or lose it kind of thing. Life happens, and our wellness goes up and down. Today's guest, Jenny Melrose, shares how she went from college athlete to exercising only when she had time. But has now worked to make movement as part of her daily habit!

Jenny is a former reading specialist who “retired” from her teaching career when her blogging income far exceeded her salary. Through hard work and dedication, her lifestyle blog, The Melrose Family, became regularly sought out by nationally recognized brands such as Neutrogena, Smuckers, Glad, Costco, Stanley Steamer, Sara Lee, and many more.

She is a content strategist that helps entrepreneurs better understand their messaging and unique position in the online space.

Now, she’s combining her passion for teaching with her extensive experience of creating strategic content for online business owners via JennyMelrose.com and her podcast, Influencer Entrepreneurs with Jenny Melrose as well as her first book Influencer Entrepreneurs: The 4-Step Framework to Building Your Audience, Growing Your Business, and Making More Money Online.

If you're feeling stuck and need some support to jumpstart your business, make sure to download Jenny's free guide!

The Fluctuations of Exercise Routines

Your routines for movement can change over your life. Jenny was a multi sport high school athlete and went on to play 2 sports in college. This gave her a routine to count on and made exercise easy.

However after college, that structured routine went away and exercise was harder to keep up with. So just because you excelled at one point in your life, that doesn't mean it's set forever.

Throughout the years your routine can be a roller coaster of ups and downs. If you are a routine oriented person, it makes getting a regular system hard.

So finding something to help get that routine back is important. For Jenny it was deciding to train for a marathon. She had structure again, which made her bring regular exercise back into her life.

After she had kids, it became hard again and it wasn't until she found an exercise program that she connected with that she was able to regularly exercise again.

Lack of Exercise and How We Feel

Moving our body is a very important part of overall wellness. When we don't move our body, we are not able to feel our best.

This is especially true when we go through times of stress, which happens with all of us. As life happens and stress builds, we start to feel things like anxiety and even deperession.

If we step back and listen to our bodies, they are pretty good at letting us know that we need something to help. When I feel things like:

My chest tighten
My stomach being uneasy
My breath getting rapid

All these things let me know that I need to get out and get moving.

Benefits of Exercise Habits

There are so many benefits to exercise, many have nothing to do with how you look! Here are some that both Jenny and I have felt first hand:

Overall feeling better
Lower frustration levels
Grounds you overall
Helps you feel centered and focus on the tasks you need to do
Give endorphins which help in life and business
Contributes to overall happiness
Decision making are better, they don't come a place of emotion

Physical changes can also be seen. While these should not be the focus, they can help motivate you. Jenny had plenty of muscle memory from her past, so the first thing she started seeing was definition in her shoulders.

I personally don't change much in size, but I do notice more definition overall, and actually am a little heavier when I am working out and lifting weight a lot.

So overall, the number on the scale and the way you look shouldn't be your focus, but the way you feel should.

How to Create an Exercise Habit

Creating a habit for exercise is really dependent on your past experience, your preference and who you are overall.

For people like Jenny who need a routine to make movement part of their regular every day life, it's important to find a program to follow and have realistic fitness goals.

Ask yourself what you like to do. Start there because if you don't like it, you won't follow through. Also do your research on what your body needs. For women over 40 especially, using weights at least 2 days a week is helpful.

Making exercise a habit won't take long if you follow these few tips:

Pick something you like to do
Follow a program if you need that accountability
Make it a routine, you can even attach it to a habit you already have, like taking a walk after diner