A few weeks ago I successfully completed an exercise program in which I worked out every day for one hundred days.  Here are some things I learned that I hope  can help you if you are considering setting your own fitness goals.

1. Don’t give yourself an out.  Just tell yourself you’re going to exercise every day, and then do it.  It’s not that hard a principle to grasp.  The problem is if you let in a seed of doubt, it can quickly sprout into a tree of excuse.  Don’t just make it a priority – make it an unbreakable contract with yourself.
2. Diet is just as important as exercise.  Your diet is your fuel.  If you put turds in your gas tank, expect to feel shitty.  Eating only high-quality foods in moderate portions will let you lose weight, feel energized, and prepare your body for the rigor of an every-day exercise program.  Eating smaller amounts more often will be good for your body.  Along the way, you’ll learn what hunger – light hunger, not starvation – will feel like.  In time, you’ll come to recognize this feeling as a good thing.  You’ll eat when you need to, not when the clock tells you to.
3. Stretching is overrated.  I don’t think I stretched at all during the one hundred days, and didn’t feel like I missed anything.  I did some dynamic strength moves that stretched muscles gently and repetitively, and I think that this is all you need.  I’ve read studies that correlate strenuous before-exercise stretching programs with injury, and I would tend to agree.
4. Vary your exercises.  Why?  Two reasons: to maintain your interest and enthusiasm, and to prevent staleness/burnout/injury.  Both are important.  Try every machine in the gym.  Take a class.  Run.  Bike.  Swim.  Love the diversity.
5. Don’t go heavy.  By this I mean don’t try to max out your intensity – in either reps or volume – more than once or twice during your hundred days.  It’s more important to be consistent and light than run the risk of burnout by going heavy too often.  Personally, I’ve made the mistake of going too heavy too fast and got burned out more times than I can remember.  Start slow, be reasonable, and I guarantee after 100 days you’ll feel more fit than you have in years.
6. You can do it on your own.  You don’t need a trainer, a workout buddy, or even a supportive spouse or significant other.  YOU have the power in you to do it all on your own.  Acknowledge this power.  When you achieve your goal, you’ll feel independent, strong, and able to take on a lot of other challenges that you are facing.
7. Prefer to work out early in the morning.  Three reasons: you’ll feel energized throughout the day, you’ll avoid having to make a tough exercise-vs.-rest decision at the end of the day when you may be tired, and you won’t be taking away family/friend time.  The downside, obviously, is that if you’re not a morning person you’ll have to adjust.  Try it.  I think you’ll find it’s worth it.
8. Stairs are God’s gift to the fitness freak.  They simultaneously train your endurance, your stamina, your cardiovascular system, and your muscles.  They have built-in goals on each rep.  They are easy on the joints.  I credit endless staircase-climbing to a lot of my gains in fitness.
9. Don’t step on the scale.  Too many people are obsessed with the scale.  Since you will be building muscle as well as losing fat the scale can be misleading, especially day-to-day.  Better to check your body in the mirror, check the fit of your clothes, and listen to the admiring comments of friends, coworkers, and family.
10. Appreciate and cherish your body.  Once you start exercising regularly, you’ll get in touch with the physical self you may have forgotten about.  All sorts of physical sensations will be yours to rediscover.  We are physical beings and feel so much better when we are friends with our bodies, instead of treating our bodies as waste dumps or forgotten toys.  Your libido will increase.  Your stamina while doing everyday tasks will increase.  Your ability to ward off sickness will increase.  I’d put in a comment about bowels here but this is a family journal (ha ha!).  Bottom line: love your body.  It’s the only one you have.

Have you completed a lengthy exercise program?  What else would you add to this list?

Tony Wright of RescueTime has a wonderful post at FoundRead talking about his lessons learned from his RescueTime / Y Combinator experience. It should be a must read for early-stage tech entrepreneurs. A couple great tidbits:

I think we were the first YC company in our session to launch. Our product now is pretty polished and has a nice long (and accelerating) growth curve… Which nips the, “Does anyone want this?” question in the bud. Launching is an admission that your users are smarter about what they want/need than you are. Or at very least, it’s an admission that you have a lot to learn about your users. Dive in!

This sentiment maps to a mini-thread I’ve been pursuing with regard to speed vs. quality. The moral: fail faster.

Also:

The most common question neophyte entrepreneurs ask is, “Now that I’ve built it, how do I market it?” If you’re asking that question, I think you need to go back to the drawing board. In low-cost / high-distribution markets that we’re all playing in, you need some combination of SEO-fu, viral loops, and tremendous word of mouth. Alternatively, if you actually have a product that you’re SELLING, you need to have some proof that you can bring in buyers without a sales force…

The moral here? Build for customers, not for the ideal product in your head.

Great stuff. Tony is a regular poster on the Seattle Tech Startups listserv and seems like he really has his entreprenurial act together. Go read this post and see if you don’t agree!