Settling into a Routine

Have I talked about my exercise ADD??  Unlike diets (of which I have only tried 2 - WW and CalorieKing) I have tried almost every exercise program I can find (except P90X -not interested).  So in the last year I have done Chalean Extreme, EA Sports Active 2,  Zumba for Wii, Dance workouts on the Wii, Sports Conditioning workouts, and I even have a Groupon for Crossfit that I haven't used (crossfit scares me).  Each time I get off to an awesome start and then something happens and it all falls apart.

So why doesn't it stick?? I decided it was time to do some self analysis.

I am too easy on myself.  If left to my own devices I tend to pick the easiest path (which is usually not working out).  I do better with competition or somebody watching.  I am easily bored.  This means that exercise DVD's can only keep me occupied for so long before I cringe at the thought of doing the same workout again.  I am social.  I work from home and working out at home makes me feel completely isolated.  I HATE cardio machines.  It is like a horrible form of torture.

I like lifting weights.  It makes me feel awesome, strong and powerful.  I like exercise classes, the group dynamic helps me push myself harder.  The set time makes it easy to schedule and stick to. I like results and sometimes weightloss and measurement results are slow to come...increasing the amount of weight or number of reps I can do tends to provide results more quickly.

So I have created and exercise routine that incorporated my likes and eliminated my dislikes.  I am doing New Rules of Lifting for Women and I really think this is something I can stick to.  Seeing how much weight I can already lift has me so excited to see how much I can increase it.  I also bought some personal training sessions.  I plan to schedule those for every other week.  The training sessions have 2 purposes...the first is to make sure my form is correct on these exercise, some of which I have never done before. The second is to have that extra push to add weight and complete all of the reps.  I love that the workout changes every 8-10 workouts so that should stave off the boredom factor.

I am also doing Body Pump classes and swimming.  I'm using Body Pump for more of the cardio effect and the social experience. And swimming because I want to get better at it and it beats a treadmill or an elliptical machine. So I am settling into this routine and plan to stick with it for the next 5-6 months.  I hope that putting together something with all the things I like will help me make this part of my lifstyle!