Health and Fitness

Isabella Lost Fat and Improved Her Fitness with 30-Minute Simple Workouts

Here’s how someone who disliked exercise stayed fit and became an influential fitness guru.

The psychological aspect of fitness is complex. Some people don’t like exercising for various reasons, even if they understand the importance of movement for our physical and mental health.

I met a friend several decades ago. She was one of them. However, her story was unusual. She is now one of the fittest people in our social circles. I want to share a few highlights from her exciting fitness journey, which started with disgust.

This is an interesting story of a friend who psychologically disliked exercise. Her disgust started in her childhood between ages six and ten. Her parents were fitness enthusiasts. Her siblings competed to be better than each other in sports.

However, she never enjoyed their behavior, especially showing off and bragging about their fitness achievements and sports competitions.

She did not want to be friends with kids she called “fitness freaks”. They turned her off. Isabella hated exercise and sports. Furthermore, she never liked physical education in school. In fact, she hated her teachers, who forced her to do exercise at school.

She created excuses not to join classes. Sometimes she pretended to be sick, saying her tummy hurts. Her parents used to take her to the family doctor, but the doctor couldn’t find anything noticeable.

He told her parents that it was most likely psychological. Her parents had to give up on her stubborn behavior, but they constantly criticized her. She grew up with resentment.

When she became an adult, she refrained from exercising. She even did not enjoy walking, swimming, or other fun activities. Her focus was on art, mainly painting and writing poetry. She loved reading books. Going to theatres and movies was her primary hobby. She dedicated herself to art and intellectual activities.

However, as she grew older, she gained fat and lost the fitness of her youth. Logically, she understood the importance of exercise for her fitness and health, but her childhood memories were holding her back.

When she was around her thirties, one day, one of her close friends convinced her that she did not need excessive exercise to stay fit.

This warm and promising claim attracted her attention. Learning to stay fit and healthy without many activities motivated her to listen to her friend. Isabella’s friend was fit, healthy, and supportive.

She realized that her friend spoke in a language that her inner child could accept. So, she got excited when her friend claimed that the gym might be a good ritual for some people, but it was not really essential for fitness. There were more manageable and quicker ways to stay fit. These words were music to her ears.

She wanted to explore further. So, her friend, who was fit but did not go to the gym, introduced her to a few simple calisthenics and cardio exercises to keep her body fit and in good shape.

All she needed was to spend around 30 minutes, in ten minutes internals, three times a day. Then, her friend recommended she do specific exercises during her work breaks. Those simple workouts did not require any equipment and could be done anywhere, even at work. All she needed was around two meters of space.

When I asked Isabella what they were, she said ten push-ups, two minutes of plank, two minutes of squats, and one-minute lunges behind her desk every two hours. In addition, she walked ten minutes after lunch and another ten minutes after dinner. After each walk, she did two minutes leg raise to tone her belly.

Within a year, she started losing fat and feeling great. I met her in our bushwalking group a few years later when she shared this story with me.

Interestingly, our bushwalking sessions were three to four hours among the eucalyptus trees. I was curious how a person who disliked exercise so much joined such a strenuous bushwalking club.

I asked what inspired her to join our club. Her answer was the incredible feeling she got from those little exercises and her love for nature.

Besides, our group was jolly, as recommended by her close friend. They sang and made lots of jokes laughing and teasing each other friendly. There was no judgment and no competition. We had people of all ages, starting from 12 to 105. It was also a multicultural group.

During our private conversations, Isabella told me that her perceptions of fitness were terrible because of the judgemental behavior of her parents, siblings, friends, and teachers.

When she understood this psychological root cause, her beliefs about fitness and people who pursue fitness changed.

As she was receptive to new ideas, I told her about our sauna group. She had never heard about saunas. She asked whether it was another fitness group.

I explained the process and benefits to her and invited her to join us on Sundays. She agreed and joined us. Intriguingly, she loved it so much that she participated almost in all sessions over the last decades. And she invited several other people to our group.

After joining our bushwalking and sauna sessions, Isabella fell in love with fitness. Long walks, her usual 30-minute exercises, and perspiring in the sauna made her very fit.

There was also a swimming pool in our health center families enjoyed water exercises with their kids very much. She loved the activities so much that she learned to swim.

More interestingly, she wanted to become a swim instructor after a while. She completed her certification and started to teach children how to swim. While earning income from her new hobby, she became extra fit.

She said she couldn’t believe such a transformation in her life. She moved her psychological position effortlessly from one end of the spectrum to another.

I congratulated her for rewiring her brain in small steps with support. She got hooked when I explained some aspects of neuroplasticity in her life.

Our friends also congratulated Isabella, who was a person who hated fitness once, for becoming a fitness guru. Her new passion, empathy, and compassion helped many children enjoy exercising with fun.

The key to her success in influencing the kids to exercise and stay fit was preventing them from competing and encouraging them to collaborate.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.

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