If the thought of exercise seems more appealing than reality, you’ll empathize with Jessica Howard. She’d always had vague intentions of running a marathon, but struggled to get up off the couch. “I wasn’t running, I wasn’t moving,” she recalls. “I was just lounging on the couch.”
That all changed when, as a student at Bangor University in the UK, she took part in a special module aimed at tackling a key challenge many of us face when it comes to exercise: motivation. It turned out there were some tips that could help her break bad habits and achieve her goals.
Summoning the will to exercise is a big challenge for most people (see “Why we don’t like to exercise” below). This is especially problematic in high-income countries, where inactivity is twice as high as in low-income countries and people are less likely to exercise enough to stay healthy in the long term.
Certain obstacles, such as poor health or lack of suitable spaces or resources, can severely limit our ability to exercise. But for many, the struggle is internal, and we struggle to make time. Although we may be fully aware of the positive effects on our physical and mental health in the long term, we are drawn to things that give us more immediate results without breaking a sweat, such as bending over to exercise…
