Warning, This Can Be Habit Forming

Up late, as usual, watching infomercials or as they call them these days “paid programming”. No, I don’t want the Colon Cleanse, I eat enough fiber, and no, I don’t want to buy a course to teach me how to sell on EBay, I do that already for free without your course thank you. But of course what always catches my eye are the exercise infomercials, oh sorry “paid programming”.

I sat through Slim in 6, Michael Thurmond’s Six Week Body Make Over and Kettleworx. They all were including, free of charge of course, a six week workout guide. I began to wonder why six weeks. Why not two, three or four weeks?

The idea behind the six weeks is that any activity, performed over and over and over again soon becomes a habit. Experts (how do I get on one of these expert panels, anyway?) have discovered that it takes six weeks of repetitive action to successfully form a habit. I guess this also applies to things that are bad for you so if I were you, I would not start any filthy repetitive activity that I don’t want to become a habit.

Now if you did not happen to be up late watching infomercials (damn, there I go again calling them infomercials) and did not get sucked into buying any of the fantastic exercise programs or the zero percent body fat models that were the “after” results of the program didn’t seal the deal for you to add another expense on your already close to maxed out credit card, then this means that you do not have the free six week workout guide that comes with said program.

Oh well, here is a trick, and I promise I don’t have many tricks in my magician’s hat anymore, but this trick is to take a regular calendar and choose a date that you want to begin your exercise program. Mark a BIG X on that date and an even BIGGER X on the date that is six weeks from that date. Make sure that you do your activity at least 3 times a week for the six weeks. Each week, mark that week off to show how much closer to your six week goal you are getting.

After you create your habit even if you take a break from it, you will find that picking it up again, is much easier than if you hadn’t established it at all, though taking a break from exercising I am not recommending (remember, you started this to become healthy not just to lose that stubborn ten pounds and then quit). This will be like riding a bike, even if your bike is buried in the garage under tons of crap, if you pull it out, you will get back on it and ride it like a pro.

TTFN
Diet Diva 4 Life