3 Lessons I’ve Learned From 11 Years of Daily Workouts

On August 26, 2013, I started a ritual I call “Fitness First.” Since then, I haven’t missed a daily workout.

Over the years I’ve learned enough lessons about habits, exercise, and consistency to fill a book. Here are the 3 most important lessons I have learned.

(1) Exercise is Not a Habit

When I first started this practice, I would keep track of my streak in terms of days. Everyone asked me “how long did it take to become a habit.”

I’m now 11 years in and I can tell you with 100% certainty: exercise is not a habit.

If you expect it to become an automatic thing you just do without thinking about it, you’ll be disappointed.

Exercise is a choice you make, a commitment, a practice, and a ritual. I made the choice once to make it a daily practice. I honor that commitment every day. And it has become a ritual I use to start my day.

(2) Environment is Everything

I used to say “it’s not about the gym.” And it may not be about the gym, per se, but it is about the environment.

Don’t try to work out at home.

Environment is more potent than willpower.

An environment that supports the activity will always be best because it will cue your brain to the activity. This is especially important for people with ADHD, because we tend to be more sensitive to environmental stimuli.

Environment =

• place
• people
• sounds
• equipment
• sights (light, views)

(3) Consistency Trumps Intensity

People often ask me how I workout every day. Don’t I get sore? Doesn’t my body need rest? Is it even healthy?

First, the whole idea that you can’t exercise daily is bullshit. Or that you need to split your body into parts to work each separately. Where did that even come from?

In old times of the hunter/gatherer days, before exercise in a gym was a thing, people spent their days working in the fields. They didn’t think about whether they had worked out the day before or whether they did too much “legs” and needed to do “upper body.”

Even in modern times, plenty of people work physical jobs. They naturally move their bodies daily.

That said, you don’t need to go intense every day. Some days I do active recovery. Sometimes I do less intense workouts for several days or weeks.

The point is that I do something every day to put myself in my body — even if that something is a restorative practice.

Because I do some form of exercise daily, I very rarely get sore.

As for whether it’s healthy: before I started this practice I was the type of person who got sick often. At age 35, my doctor told me I was in the early stages of menopause. Now, at age 49, I rarely get sick and my cycles are more regular than they were in my 20s.