Bring exercise into your life

SELF-SABOTAGE You know you should work out, but you make excuses. AMBITION To start exercising regularly. TRY THIS If you want to develop a healthier relationship with exercise, ask yourself two things:

● Do you associate exercise with anything emotionally painful? Perhaps you were the last one picked for the netball team at school.

● What will be the most effective way for you to create an exercise habit?

If you’ve got a limiting belief associated with fitness, such as ‘I’m just not sporty’, you’ll need to overcome it before you feel like donning your trainers. Put these three things into 1 place to get into a positive routine:

Give yourself a prompt: Something that signals the beginning of your workout – a certain point in the day,

or your running shoes waiting 2 for you in the morning.

Decide the routine: What are you going to do – swimming, 3 Zumba, a lunchtime jog?

Set a reward: The euphoric feeling exercise evokes is reward enough for some, but if you need more, keep your favourite healthy snack for when you’ve finished working out. Commit to following your routine for two months; that’s how long I believe it takes for habits to start looking after themselves. Your mind will start anticipating the reward whenever you encounter the prompt. You could even find yourself longing to get down to your spinning class just because it’s 5:30pm on a Tuesday!

Hazel’s new book, Fight: Lessons From Battles Won & Lost (Yellow Kite, £18.99) is out on 22 March