How To Increase Your Sex Drive Part 14
You don’t have to exercise so hard that you crawl home into a fetal position every night to get the benefits. In fact, there’s a growing body of evidence that exercising too much is detrimental to your sex life. For example, studies show that moderate exercise increases circulating androgens (sex hormones like testosterone, androstenedione, and dehydroepiandrosterone), but intense exercise decreases them.
My guess is that you don’t like exercising, in great part, because you pushed yourself too hard for too long. Well, now you know you don’t have to. But the bigger reason for your resistance might just be because you’ve been exercising for all the wrong reasons. Despite everything you hear to the contrary…
You Shouldn’t Exercise To Lose Weight
Weight loss is the single worst motivation for exercise. It virtually guarantees that you will come to hate it and that you will eventually stop. To understand why let’s examine a peculiar contradiction.
On the one hand, researchers have known for years that men who exercise have a better body image than men who don’t. That’s because exercise provides the basic building blocks of body confidence: Competence, agency and mastery.
As you get faster, stronger and learn new skills you get a renewed sense of wonder and admiration of what your body is capable of doing. In fact, studies show that even between men of similar weight and shape, the men who exercise feel a lot better about their bodies than men who don’t.
On the other hand, researchers noticed something unusual and unexpected: For many men, exercise worsened their body image.
When they dug a little deeper, researchers discovered that exercise’s effect on body image depends on your motivation for doing it. If you exercise to stay healthy and fit, your body image will most likely improve. If you exercise to lose weight, it most likely won’t.
Since many men have unachievable supermodel weight loss goals, they are bound to fail. Exercise as a tool for weight loss reminds them of how dissatisfied they are with their bodies. In fact, it creates more dissatisfaction because exercise as a weight loss tool sucks you into that cycle of self-loathing: Try, fail, shame. Try, fail, guilt. Try, fail, despair.
Exercising for the right reasons
Now, it’s ridiculous to think that weight control won’t be part of your motivation for exercise. Of course it will. But instead of seeing weight loss as a primary goal, see it as a secondary consequence. Otherwise, exercise goes from being a stress-buster to a stress-maker.
So, before deciding on an exercise regimen, get clear on your motivation. You can easily tell if weight loss is your primary goal if you say things like, “Well, I’m going to have to hit the gym extra hard tomorrow” after eating a rich meal. The proper response to eating a rich meal is to enjoy it, not to punish yourself with exercise.
The primary benefit to exercise is health and fitness, not weight loss. Yes, exercise produces weight loss but that is a by-product, not its purpose. You should work out to maintain optimal health, to reduce stress, anxiety and depression.
You should work out to get a sense of accomplishment, for a higher quality of life, for fun, to gain mastery and confidence, to build muscle, to increase energy levels, to strengthen your heart, improve circulation, prevent back pain, strengthen bones, improve posture, strengthen tissue around the joints, decrease risk for disease, improve mental functioning, increase confidence and self-esteem, improve sleep, increase resistance to fatigue, and reduce blood pressure.
In short, you should exercise to promote an overall sense of well-being. Which promotes good sex which promotes well-being. Exercise pops you into this powerful reinforcement cycle.
What If You Hate Exercise, Period?
Although the 20/70 workout doesn’t require a high level of fitness, the idea of a moderate-to-intense 20 minute workout can feel a little daunting to the committed couch potato. But then, any exercise is probably unappealing. Sofa spuds, I ask you to push the pause button on your resistance long enough to hear why exercise is so important to your sexual health.
Recall the reinforcement cycle– well-being produces good sex which contributes to well-being. Exercise inserts you into this reinforcement cycle by reducing stress, depression and anxiety and by increasing blood flow to the genitals. It is the single fastest way to affect the psychology of well-being and the physiology of sexual arousal at the same time. It is so critical to your success that it behooves you to commit to an exercise plan that you can stick to, no matter what level of effort you exert.
The Couch Potato’s Guide To Creating A Sex Exercise Regimen
The only exercise that matters is the exercise you’re willing to do. So, this guide isn’t so much about picking an exercise and showing you how to perform it, but about forming an exercise habit. Discipline and will-power will only take you through the first few weeks of an exercise program. Habit, on the other hand, is forever.
Pick An Exercise You Like Or Feel Neutral About
No amount of motivation is going to overcome resistance to a hated exercise. Pick something you like, or at the very least, something you don’t dislike. Never associate a habit with pain, only with pleasure. If it’s at all possible pick an exercise you can do outdoors. Some studies suggest that outdoor exercise can be as effective as antidepressants in treating mild to moderate depression and anxiety.
Vary The Exercises Frequently
Familiarity breeds contempt. Doing the same exercise day after day is a recipe for resignation. If you run on Monday, go to the gym on Tuesday, swim on Wednesday, do aerobics on Thursday. Variety is a prophylactic to quitting.
Start Slow
Don’t exercise for an hour. Don’t even do twenty minutes. Start with five minutes the first few days, adding thirty seconds every day until you get to 10 minutes. Then use the same scale to get to 15 and 20 minutes. Pain doesn’t build habits; pleasure does. If you don’t feel good after exercising, back off, you’re doing too much. Success starts with the lowest intensity possible and gradually moves up.
Exercise Every Day For 30 Days
Habits need daily reinforcement. You don’t get in the cigarette habit by smoking twice a week. You don’t get in the coffee habit by drinking it every few days. The only way to create an exercise habit is to condition it deeply enough to switch the behavior to autopilot. The best way to do that is to set a 30 Day Challenge. Exercise every day, preferably at the same time. The more consistent the action the more likely it will turn into a habit.
Create An Exercise Trigger
The latest science in habit formation shows that almost all habits have an event trigger. For example, having an alcoholic drink is a trigger for many smokers to pull out a cigarette. A shower might be a trigger for you to brush your teeth. Triggers work subconsciously to condition a behavior. The dinner bell rings and Pavlov’s dog salivates. A morning exercise trigger might be a cup of coffee. Drink it and immediately grab your exercise gear and head out the door.
Do it consciously for a sustained period of time and your subconscious will take over–you won’t have to think about picking up your gym bag after you finish your cup. Triggers, like habits, take time to form. Do it every day if you want it to stick.
Set A Consistent Time
An event trigger isn’t going to do you much good if you exercise at different times. Are you more likely to follow through in the mornings, at lunch or in the evening? Set a consistent time and follow it.
Measure Your Progress
Seeing your progress will motivate you to keep going, enhance your body image and increase the chance for success. Log your progress right away, as soon as you’re done working out. Don’t put it off. Don’t make it complicated–just the date and what you did. Over time you’re going to be amazed at your progress. When you go from 5 minutes of exercise a day to 20, for example, a real sense of pride and accomplishment takes over.
Report To Other People
Talk up your exercise to family, friends and co-workers. Peer pressure helps form habits.
Reduce Friction
If you wake up at five a.m. only to realize you can’t find your sneakers you might decide to go back to bed. Habit experts call obstacles like this “friction”–they make habits more difficult to take hold. So, get your gear ready before bed so you can zoom out of the house without thinking about it.
Movement Is Medicine
There is one last benefit of exercise I haven’t mentioned. It doesn’t just set the stage for you to feel desire; it also makes you feel more desirable. One study found that men who exercised two to three times a week felt more sexually desirable than men who didn’t. Move. Be active. Exercise. Your sex life is worth it. Your well-being is worth it. You are worth it.
Next week: Why exercising with your partner can feel like a pheromone.