Reward Yourself During or After Exercise (But Not With Food)

[This is an excerpt from my upcoming weight loss book, The Weight Loss Habit]

Edit:

The book is now available.

Remember my tip about forming habits from Part 1: To be able to form a habit, it’s really best if it’s something that’s easy, convenient, enjoyable, provides immediate positive feedback, or is incremental improvements over time.

You can kind of cheat this with exercise, by making it more enjoyable and giving yourself immediate positive feedback through the use of a reward.

If you do something that makes you happy or is really enjoyable immediately after, or even better – during – exercise, then you’ll mentally associate the two things, and start to crave exercise because of the reward.

Some possible rewards are:

• Watch a favorite or “guilty pleasure” TV show.
• Watch movies.
• Exercise with friends so that you can socialize at the same time.
• Listen to your favorite music.
• Listen to your favorite podcast.
• Get a massage.
• Take a relaxing hot shower.
• Take a relaxing bath.
• Chill out in the hot tub.
• Play your favorite video game.
• Take in pleasant scenery. (During a walk, hike, jog, or bike-ride.)
• Window-shop or look at interesting stuff during a walk through a mall, museum, zoo, library, etc.
• Read a beloved book. (Either after exercise, or during exercise, if you can rig up some sort of stand while using a treadmill or stationary bike.)
• Do a crossword puzzle.
• Watch stand-up comedy.
• Watch YouTube videos.
• Play/snuggle with your pets.
• Play/snuggle with your children.
• Take a nap.
• Sexy time with your partner. (Obviously only if your partner is down for this, and they’d probably prefer if you take a shower first.)
• Sexy time with yourself.

Pick whichever one of these suits you best, or come up with your own.

However, one reward you *shouldn’t* use is any sort of food. This is counterproductive. You don’t want to undo all the good work you did burning calories through your exercise by consuming a high-calorie food.

But more importantly, you don’t want to build the habit of seeing food as a reward. As someone following the Weight Loss Habit, this is undercutting the mentality you need to foster.

Besides, the world offers an incredibly array of joyous and fulfilling experiences, more and more of which will become available to you as you shed off the pounds.

What about you? What are some rewards you like to give yourself for exercising? And what are some ways you make exercise into its own reward?