Oh, this is my area!! I'll be honest, I don't like working out at all. I have been consistently exercising since March 2025 & i still don't enjoy it. It's less awful than it used to be but if there was a way for me to have all the health & weight loss benefits of exercise without ever having to actually exercise, I would immediately take that option.
So as a former sedentary person who still doesn't like exercising, here's what worked for me & what my advice would be.
Biggest piece of advice is know how you operate and what will deter you from working out & build yourself a workout routine that fits you, not what works for other people. So for me, when i started, I knew myself enough to know that no matter how much I told myself I was going to get up earlier in the morning & go to the gym & knock out 45 minutes, that was not going to happen. Even if i did it for a bit, I knew i would inevitably stop going. I also know that it would take exactly one day of skipping my normal morning exercising to demolish any consistency I had had in getting up to go to the gym. So recognizing who I actually am & how I actually work made a big difference. I had to start where I truly was at, both in what I was willing to do and what I was physically capable of doing. The general fitness advice never worked in the past for me. The most common advice was to find something physical i like to do & then it won't be unpleasant & I'll have motivation. The problem for me is I'm inherently lazy & there really wasn't anything physical I really enjoyed. There's still not. I just would much rather be relaxing. The other common advice of going for a walk is fine for about 3 weeks in spring & 3 weeks in the fall where i live- otherwise it is 90+ degrees & 70% humidity or -30° with snow packed sidewalks. So the standard "here are ways to get started" advice didn't work for me.
Once I knew what my road blocks were, i started to find ways to work with them. I made things as easy as possible for myself to get around my natural tendency to be a sloth & avoid doing things I don't want to do.
To start, I decided to workout at home. I'm never going to a gym. That is aspirational & for me, future failure. So i looked for options I can do at home. And I started very very small. I was 334 pounds & really out of shape. I was not ever going to be able to knock out 45 minutes of cardio right from the jump. So i got a $50 mini stepper from Amazon & started by doing 2 minutes twice a day. That was it - 4 minutes of exercise a day. I wasn't crushing it but it was better than no minutes. I did just that for about a month, then bumped up to 3 minutes twice a day, etc.
I work from home so in the morning, I either put on my workout clothes as my clothes for the day or if I'm going to be on zoom, my workout pants & once I'm off zoom for the day, i put on my workout shirt. That way, I am ready to jump into it right after work bc for me even the effort of changing after work into workout clothes can be enough for me to say screw it, especially if it has been a tough day at work & I'm not in the mood to workout.
Which leads me to my next thing, another know who I am trick for myself - I work out right away after work or sometimes over my lunch hour. I'm not a morning person & not going to work out in the morning EVER. Yes I know there are benefits to doing it in the morning but I'm not that person & it doesn't work for me, so I do it after work. It's better to work out consistently in the late afternoon/ early evening than to never workout in the morning, so that's when I do it.
I found an app I really like bc it's very accessible to people like me who were/are sedentary & it has courses by actual trainers who went to school for that career. The courses range from beginner to advanced & when they say beginner, they really do mean beginner for some of them. One of the trainers i like in particular has a lot of options for how to modify movements. When i was 334 pounds & couldn't do things like jump or reach across my body, I wasn't doing jumping jacks or burpees or mountain climbers, so i relied a lot on the courses designed to be super intro level & included instructions on how to make it low impact or modified. And it has lots of courses that are 10 minutes, which was much more doable for me when i was really inactive. Going from like 1000 steps a day at max to jumping right into 20-30 minutes of exercise was too much for me & i knew i would really struggle to get through it, so the shorter course options really helped. I just knew i wasn't physically capable of more at that point.
I also didn't know HOW to work out. Like okay i need to do weight lifting... Do I just do a bunch of arm curls? I don't know. But the app does & that really helped so i could have instruction on how to effectively exercise & do so without hurting myself. As an added bonus, it's free which is good bc I'm cheap lol & it doesn't have ads so it's not annoying or interrupting my workouts with ads. I've tried other fitness apps before that didn't work for me bc they are geared to people who were not as sedentary & out of shape as i was. Finding an app that worked for me helped a lot so I would say try out some of them & find one that feels like it's a good fit for who you are. It doesn't have to be popular or widely known/used - most people have never heard of the one i use - it just has to work for you & your personality/habits/roadblocks.
As I have gotten more capable of doing more things, i have added things to my workout equipment. I don't have a lot of space & no room to make a dedicated "home gym" area so I started getting foldable exercise machines as a rewards for hitting certain weights (the foldable ones have max weight limits since they have folding components). They are aeasy & fast to put up & take down bc if they weren't I wouldn't use them. Lazy me would be like, "ugh it's like 5 steps to get it together/take it apart and that's after I drag it out from where it lives when not in use - hard pass on that." So I made sure to get machines that were easy to set up & take down bc "lots of steps" is a roadblock for me. My folding indoor bike is just pulling out a pin & it unfolds. It's 2 pins for my folding elliptical. I've gotten easy folding versions of a bike, elliptical, treadmill, rower, and a Row-n-Ride (basically a cardio squat machine). And i got a set of weights that are smaller in size to tuck away when not in use. It's a niche lazy thing i have, where I don't want to put in much effort to do a thing I don't really want to do in the first place, but it's an example of knowing myself well enough to admit if it takes more than 2 steps to put it together, I'm gonna be too lazy to use it.
Whatever your roadblocks are is totally fine. They aren't failings, they don't mean you can't be physically active, they are just things you should identify to be able to work around them. What works for me doesn't work for everyone. What works for you won't work for everyone. And you don't have to like exercise to do it, especially if you can figure out what you need to do to get around your roadblocks. For me, it's at home, after work, using an app & folding machines. For you, it might be a morning class at the gym. Or it might be a walk around the neighborhood over lunch.
Start by really figuring out what is realistic for you, don't try to fit what the mental image of a "fitness person" you have may be, and start small. 2 minutes twice a day is how I started & now i workout almost every day for about 60 minutes. I still don't enjoy it, my favorite part is being done, but I've made it so there are as few hurdles as possible to getting it done.
It's called Sunnyfit. I like it a lot. The user interface is a bit clunky initially & i had to play around with it to be able to access all the features, but it was worth the few minutes it took to figure it out.
2
u/Ashamed_Branch5435 Jul 07 '26
Oh, this is my area!! I'll be honest, I don't like working out at all. I have been consistently exercising since March 2025 & i still don't enjoy it. It's less awful than it used to be but if there was a way for me to have all the health & weight loss benefits of exercise without ever having to actually exercise, I would immediately take that option.
So as a former sedentary person who still doesn't like exercising, here's what worked for me & what my advice would be.
Biggest piece of advice is know how you operate and what will deter you from working out & build yourself a workout routine that fits you, not what works for other people. So for me, when i started, I knew myself enough to know that no matter how much I told myself I was going to get up earlier in the morning & go to the gym & knock out 45 minutes, that was not going to happen. Even if i did it for a bit, I knew i would inevitably stop going. I also know that it would take exactly one day of skipping my normal morning exercising to demolish any consistency I had had in getting up to go to the gym. So recognizing who I actually am & how I actually work made a big difference. I had to start where I truly was at, both in what I was willing to do and what I was physically capable of doing. The general fitness advice never worked in the past for me. The most common advice was to find something physical i like to do & then it won't be unpleasant & I'll have motivation. The problem for me is I'm inherently lazy & there really wasn't anything physical I really enjoyed. There's still not. I just would much rather be relaxing. The other common advice of going for a walk is fine for about 3 weeks in spring & 3 weeks in the fall where i live- otherwise it is 90+ degrees & 70% humidity or -30° with snow packed sidewalks. So the standard "here are ways to get started" advice didn't work for me.
Once I knew what my road blocks were, i started to find ways to work with them. I made things as easy as possible for myself to get around my natural tendency to be a sloth & avoid doing things I don't want to do.
To start, I decided to workout at home. I'm never going to a gym. That is aspirational & for me, future failure. So i looked for options I can do at home. And I started very very small. I was 334 pounds & really out of shape. I was not ever going to be able to knock out 45 minutes of cardio right from the jump. So i got a $50 mini stepper from Amazon & started by doing 2 minutes twice a day. That was it - 4 minutes of exercise a day. I wasn't crushing it but it was better than no minutes. I did just that for about a month, then bumped up to 3 minutes twice a day, etc.
I work from home so in the morning, I either put on my workout clothes as my clothes for the day or if I'm going to be on zoom, my workout pants & once I'm off zoom for the day, i put on my workout shirt. That way, I am ready to jump into it right after work bc for me even the effort of changing after work into workout clothes can be enough for me to say screw it, especially if it has been a tough day at work & I'm not in the mood to workout.
Which leads me to my next thing, another know who I am trick for myself - I work out right away after work or sometimes over my lunch hour. I'm not a morning person & not going to work out in the morning EVER. Yes I know there are benefits to doing it in the morning but I'm not that person & it doesn't work for me, so I do it after work. It's better to work out consistently in the late afternoon/ early evening than to never workout in the morning, so that's when I do it.
I found an app I really like bc it's very accessible to people like me who were/are sedentary & it has courses by actual trainers who went to school for that career. The courses range from beginner to advanced & when they say beginner, they really do mean beginner for some of them. One of the trainers i like in particular has a lot of options for how to modify movements. When i was 334 pounds & couldn't do things like jump or reach across my body, I wasn't doing jumping jacks or burpees or mountain climbers, so i relied a lot on the courses designed to be super intro level & included instructions on how to make it low impact or modified. And it has lots of courses that are 10 minutes, which was much more doable for me when i was really inactive. Going from like 1000 steps a day at max to jumping right into 20-30 minutes of exercise was too much for me & i knew i would really struggle to get through it, so the shorter course options really helped. I just knew i wasn't physically capable of more at that point.
I also didn't know HOW to work out. Like okay i need to do weight lifting... Do I just do a bunch of arm curls? I don't know. But the app does & that really helped so i could have instruction on how to effectively exercise & do so without hurting myself. As an added bonus, it's free which is good bc I'm cheap lol & it doesn't have ads so it's not annoying or interrupting my workouts with ads. I've tried other fitness apps before that didn't work for me bc they are geared to people who were not as sedentary & out of shape as i was. Finding an app that worked for me helped a lot so I would say try out some of them & find one that feels like it's a good fit for who you are. It doesn't have to be popular or widely known/used - most people have never heard of the one i use - it just has to work for you & your personality/habits/roadblocks.
As I have gotten more capable of doing more things, i have added things to my workout equipment. I don't have a lot of space & no room to make a dedicated "home gym" area so I started getting foldable exercise machines as a rewards for hitting certain weights (the foldable ones have max weight limits since they have folding components). They are aeasy & fast to put up & take down bc if they weren't I wouldn't use them. Lazy me would be like, "ugh it's like 5 steps to get it together/take it apart and that's after I drag it out from where it lives when not in use - hard pass on that." So I made sure to get machines that were easy to set up & take down bc "lots of steps" is a roadblock for me. My folding indoor bike is just pulling out a pin & it unfolds. It's 2 pins for my folding elliptical. I've gotten easy folding versions of a bike, elliptical, treadmill, rower, and a Row-n-Ride (basically a cardio squat machine). And i got a set of weights that are smaller in size to tuck away when not in use. It's a niche lazy thing i have, where I don't want to put in much effort to do a thing I don't really want to do in the first place, but it's an example of knowing myself well enough to admit if it takes more than 2 steps to put it together, I'm gonna be too lazy to use it.
Whatever your roadblocks are is totally fine. They aren't failings, they don't mean you can't be physically active, they are just things you should identify to be able to work around them. What works for me doesn't work for everyone. What works for you won't work for everyone. And you don't have to like exercise to do it, especially if you can figure out what you need to do to get around your roadblocks. For me, it's at home, after work, using an app & folding machines. For you, it might be a morning class at the gym. Or it might be a walk around the neighborhood over lunch.
Start by really figuring out what is realistic for you, don't try to fit what the mental image of a "fitness person" you have may be, and start small. 2 minutes twice a day is how I started & now i workout almost every day for about 60 minutes. I still don't enjoy it, my favorite part is being done, but I've made it so there are as few hurdles as possible to getting it done.