It is one of the best ways to change your life. 

It is one of the best ways to change your body.

It is one of the best ways to change your brain.

It is one of the best ways to change your mindset.

It is one of the best ways to keep  you out of the doctor’s office.

It is one of the best ways to keep you moving in the last decade of life.

Yet when I talk to my patients that is the one thing they don’t have time for.

Yet when I talk to my patients that is the one thing they don’t mind skipping.

Yet when I ask my patients “why” their reply is; “we know we should do it but it’s easy to make an excuse for it and let it slide.”

That thing is daily exercise!

It might sound unreal  like how exercise can be that. But it truly is a  “Keystone habit” is a term coined by journalist Charles Duhigg in his book The Power of Habit. What a keystone habit is that it refers to a small change that can lead to a domino effect of positive changes in other areas of your life.

So keystone habits are super habits that have a cascading effect that starts with a healthy behavior such an exercise and it makes you want to do other better things like 

Start eating healthier

• Go to bed earlier
• Be more productive
• Be nicer to others

For me it’s been a stepping stone habit for sure.

I was a runner in high school but parents didn’t really like for me to be active because culturally it’s not something girls should do. That didn’t sit well with me but I had to honor their wishes.

When i moved to NYC in 2003, I started going to the gym regularly. Initially, I just joined the health club because I wanted to exercise during cold winter months. A few months after getting bored of the treadmill and elliptical, I tried some group fitness classes. I still remember I used to go to New York City Sport Club and take their core burner class. I loved those core workouts. 

It was love at first sight!

The more I did it the more I loved it.

When I had my younger two boys, going to the gym gave me the very necessary two hours I needed during the day for self care.

Personally I feel like exercise has been a great tool that taught me self-discipline on a regular basis. It has taught me how to better focus on the task at hand and keep on putting the reps in. I think putting the consistent reps in is probably one of the best skills I’ve learned from working out.

And if you want to be the best in any area of your life, You’ll have to put the reps in.

When I took up distance running in 2015, the daily exercise habit helped me to persevere and set goals and work towards achieving them.

Fitness is the ultimate discipline on earth. If you want to build more discipline into your life, try exercise and get more fit. A lot of people are looking for HOW TO BUILD SELF-DISCIPLINE FOR WORKING OUT and I think it’s totally opposite where working out teaches you self discipline.

If you struggle with organization and focus, then try working out, try putting a competition on the calendar like training for a triathlon or a Spartan race.

You’ll find those experiences are the methods on earth to build discipline. You build a solid routine, and there is simplicity in the routine. 

And think about it….

Exercise is = What You Do With Your Body and you have a lot of control over what you do to it right!

And that’s not all that exercise has done for me….

It has given me something I lacked throughout early adult years.

I don’t think I’ve talked about this a lot but growing up I had very low self esteem and confidence. 

I mirrored what was taught and exemplified at home.

But exercise turned that around. It boosted my self confidence. I realized that I had the ability to get things done. Of course, physical changes are a natural result of regular exercise, but what surprised me was that the biggest transformation didn’t happen in the mirror, but in my mind. Running a 5k for the first time, lifting a heavier weight, or holding a plank longer than yesterday builds gave me tangible proof of my strength.

Showing up at the gym when I didn’t feel like it taught me grit, which I could translate to other areas of life—work, parenting, and relationships.

Every time I hit a goal, my brain recorded a win. 

Everytime i set a PR or ran a little longer I had a dopamine surge.

Those small wins kept stacking up.

That’s what shifted my mindset from “I can’t” to “I can”.

And I’m no longer self-conscious. I’m confident in my abilities.

For me, that’s a big win in my books. 

So, I’d tell you exercise is an awesome place to start when it comes to changing your life for the better.

Exercise also gave me the confidence and strength to believe that I could do anything. Every time I set a new PR or perform an exercise with goof form, I’m like “Oh wow I can do this. And if I can do this I can do a lot more!”

You might be like that isn’t anything drastic, but it’s real. 

But for me this has been more than enough to want to keep going. Exercise has given me a life long journey of striving for greater goals and every time I’ve done that satisfaction has followed.

I’ve experienced it firsthand. And that’s exactly why I exercise.