How do you motivate yourself to get up early in the morning to exercise?

I can just say the 7 minute workout in Fabulous rid me of my lethargy so I’m more energatic now that I can get up early.

My motivation is to get my body used to waking up and moving early again. When I start school again in a few weeks, I want to be able to keep up with my early classes. Also when I wake up early I feel like there’s more time to get things done during the day.

Usually I have to remind myself that I’ll feel worse if I don’t exercise, than if I do, both mentally and physically. I might not feel like exercising, but I know that once I get outside, on my run, I’ll feel a lot better!

I like exercising generally, and i do it in my room so that I don’t get distracted. Once I open my eyes I drink some water, that’s always by my bed side, stand in the mirror and start stretching. My body likes the stretch so I continue with light exercises, such as leg lifts, arm rotation and so on.

Surgery is not an excuse to gain weight and get lazy. Rather it should have been an eye opener to make my health a priority. Now after 20 kg weight gain, I realise it’s high time I started doing something about it.

I need to make sure to go to bed no later than 10 p.m. tonight before. And make sure to drink water first thing in the morning and start exercising

My best motivation to wake up early to work out is if I go to sleep early and I set out everything I need to do the night before and before I go to sleep I visualize how great it will feel.

It is a struggle. Its like everyday is a war. I may not complete my task in the morning but i make sure I am doing it in the day

Great question! The only thing that really works for me, as far as morning exercise goes, is to have another person to be accountable to. My retirement consists of yoga, pilates, and working with a personal trainer, even though I am on a fixed income. Having an appointment with someone is crucial for me. Eventually I do hope to be more self-motivated and not so reliant on expensive private and semi-private classes. I think if you aren’t a morning person or morning exercise is just not realistic, it would be better to exercise when it IS realistic. The 8 minute exercise recommended by Fabulous, however, is, in my opinion totally doable and can be a lot of fun if you do something you like. My favorite 8 minute morning exercise is to turn on music and get on the rebounder (mini-trampoline), in pajamas. Two or three songs goes by really fast and I don’t go very hard at it but still find it enormously beneficial, especially for my brain. My other favorite thing is to do three to five yoga sun salutations. The really cool thing that happens is after you do whatever exercise you choose that is sustainable and realistic for a couple or a few days, you really can’t wait to get up and do it again. Of course there are times when the routine gets interrupted, and then you have to use more diligence to get back on track. (Don’t beat yourself up for missing a few days, just get back to it).

I make it something fun that I look forward to doing, like dancing! If I get bored of what I’m doing I change it up and the excitement of something new is what gets me out of bed, like going for a walk, to the gym, or out with my dog.