Framing why you are there is huge as well. It cannot be about the sometime arbitrarily in the future end result, such as "lose weight" or "be in better shape," because then every single individual workout actually is the chore you are experiencing it to be. Your brain is experiencing the workout as a sacrifice today for that far off future result.
My advice would be to instead try to focus in on what you are doing as "training for [something]." Then it is never about the ten thousand foot goal of "lose weight" and becomes more about incremental gains you'll feel and see week to week, month to month. What is exciting about this, once you are "training" you start to really customize what you are doing and things don't feel purposeless anymore. What that [something] is for you can be and absolutely should be absolutely up to you - a sport, longevity/mobility, a certain specific aesthetic, its whatever you fancy mate!
For instance, I started in March 2022 at 265 pounds just running outside as much as I could every week (it started very slow and painful if I'm being frank) with a goal to lose weight and improve my mental wellbeing. While I kept up with it every week I totally hit the "chore" wall you are communicating in your post. Well, as described above, I pivoted my objective/mentality and now treat long-distance running as my sport; I now "train to be a runner." This initially led to me varying up my cardio workouts between shorter runs and longer runs as well as low heart rate zone days and high heart rate zone days. I then integrated kettlebells into my routine and do a lot of weird foot exercises with the added weight to help avoid injury/runner's foot/etc. (my distance frontier is directly correlated with foot/tendon injuries I experience so it just became a necessity if I wanted to run further), and of course the weight lifting aspect only helps with my base daily at-rest calorie burn which by pure coincidence circled back to why I started running back in March 2022 at 265 pounds. Win/Win. I'm currently at a weight of 205, am able to run a distance of eight miles (10min pace) before experiencing injury, and most important to me, my mental health is greatly improved!
Koaladesktop t1_jaa2mjr wrote
Reply to Going to the gym was fun for a month. [Discussion] by SunKissed_ox
Framing why you are there is huge as well. It cannot be about the sometime arbitrarily in the future end result, such as "lose weight" or "be in better shape," because then every single individual workout actually is the chore you are experiencing it to be. Your brain is experiencing the workout as a sacrifice today for that far off future result.
My advice would be to instead try to focus in on what you are doing as "training for [something]." Then it is never about the ten thousand foot goal of "lose weight" and becomes more about incremental gains you'll feel and see week to week, month to month. What is exciting about this, once you are "training" you start to really customize what you are doing and things don't feel purposeless anymore. What that [something] is for you can be and absolutely should be absolutely up to you - a sport, longevity/mobility, a certain specific aesthetic, its whatever you fancy mate!
For instance, I started in March 2022 at 265 pounds just running outside as much as I could every week (it started very slow and painful if I'm being frank) with a goal to lose weight and improve my mental wellbeing. While I kept up with it every week I totally hit the "chore" wall you are communicating in your post. Well, as described above, I pivoted my objective/mentality and now treat long-distance running as my sport; I now "train to be a runner." This initially led to me varying up my cardio workouts between shorter runs and longer runs as well as low heart rate zone days and high heart rate zone days. I then integrated kettlebells into my routine and do a lot of weird foot exercises with the added weight to help avoid injury/runner's foot/etc. (my distance frontier is directly correlated with foot/tendon injuries I experience so it just became a necessity if I wanted to run further), and of course the weight lifting aspect only helps with my base daily at-rest calorie burn which by pure coincidence circled back to why I started running back in March 2022 at 265 pounds. Win/Win. I'm currently at a weight of 205, am able to run a distance of eight miles (10min pace) before experiencing injury, and most important to me, my mental health is greatly improved!