🥘A Simple Recipe For Making Hard Things Easy

Here's what I've done -- with myself and my clients -- to make exercise a lifestyle.

Something I found with my dessert at dinner on Saturday that you should remind yourself of.

Now and again, I like to think about the ways in which exercise can be more accessible for people.

Truly, there are a myriad of factors that limit people from exercising.

No access to a gym.

Expensive equipment.

Injuries and pain.

Busy work schedules.

Children.

Not enough time in the day for something meaningful.

The list goes on.

However, I’m not cynical enough to believe that Movement isn’t possible for everyone.

I’ve seen some amazing transformation stories, sparked by one catalyst moment and someone’s life that might seem trivial to another’s.

It’s probably a cliche, but the impetus to take control of your health starts in your mind.

And no, I’m not here to tell you that you just need to try harder or be more consistent, or even talk yourself into a daily routine of it.

I’m here to tell you that just believing that you’re more fit than you initially thought and reframing the way you think about “exercise” can have a massive effect on your life.

But first…

Something that’s had a massive effect on my life recently is the Thrive25 app.

I wake up at 5:30 am every day, and it was hard for me to rationalize having a routine.

But Thrive25 is a great place to start for tracking your labs, improving your health, and setting goals to feel better and live longer.

I’ve partnered with them and developed my personalized longevity routine, not one that’s cut-and-pasted from the web.

Best of all? Thrive25 is super affordable and secure. If you sign up for their app with my affiliate link, you’ll save on your health for life.

Use my link to get an early access discount FOREVER and take real control of your health.

Reframing Exercise And Your Relationship with How “Fit” You Are

I started working with a client with scoliosis 18 months ago.

She routinely mentioned feeling uncomfortable, like she was out of alignment, and that her day-to-day work had her feeling drained.

I should also mention she was exiting a toxic relationship, which may have had something to do with how she was feeling overall.

But I’m not a spiritual healer.

I do, however, know how movement heals.

Two or three months into training, she hadn’t noticed it, but her posture, shoulder position, and foot arch had dramatically improved from just mastering a few exercises.

Five or six months in, she reported actually feeling better.

But that is a standard trajectory.

What’s happened in the last four months may have changed her life trajectory forever.

Once we started moving to more complex lifts, she gained a certain insatiable quality for exercise.

But the interesting part was… she didn’t think of it as exercise.

A few months ago, this client reported starting a daily stretching routine in between our training sessions together that she said, catapulted her feelings of alignment into a new stratosphere.

While I always try to assign homework to clients, this practice of hers was self-taught.

When I asked her what prompted her new routine, her answer surprised me:

“I stopped thinking about the stuff I do outside of the gym as ‘exercise,’ and started thinking about it as ‘connecting with my body.’”

This answer was something I figured I couldn’t gatekeep.

I started telling my other clients about this, too.

And suddenly, strength training wasn’t the only thing my clients were doing outside of our workouts.

Yoga, running, massages, stretching…

These are all forms of connecting with your body and moving.

In isolation, they don’t achieve much. But when combined in a stew of all-encompassing movement and bodily attention, they create an incredibly healthy human.

My client, who started this trend, doesn’t just stretch anymore.

She joined a gym and connects with her body there three times a week.

Her simple change in language around exercise turned her aversion to difficult training into a habit that she associates with pleasure.

The Power of Language and What You Tell Yourself

Two years ago, I wasn’t a runner. But earlier this year, I ran 6-minute miles at a 10k.

My client’s story is not a new one either.

Changing the language around how you exercise and what you call exercise is only part of the story.

Doing this can help form a habit, but one way you can also help improve your fitness outcomes is simply believing that you are capable of exercising more (and even thinking you “exercise a lot).

Studies show this form of delusion actually leads people to healthier lives.

You don’t necessarily need to be perfect every single day, despite popular belief.

If you simply tell yourself you’re doing well enough, or even better than the average person (which you probably are), you’ll probably keep going…right?

In my case, I didn’t think of myself as much of a runner a year ago.

I didn’t dedicate nearly enough time as some of the hardcore amateurs (35-40 miles per week) do. I’d be lucky to eke out 20.

Still, I told myself it was enough, given my schedule constraints.

As of 2025, I’ve found enough time to make 30 miles per week work. And boy, has it paid dividends.

I finished top 100 in a 5k recently with over 4,800 people.

Earlier this year, I finished 479th out of 11,000 in a 10k, running 6:30-minute miles. Do I consider myself an “elite” runner?

No, but in the past year and a half, I’ve become a damn good one.

That mindset shift took time.

As do many of them.

But the stories you tell yourself — down to the very last word and way you describe that story — MATTER. A LOT.

Don’t take it from me. Take it from the amazing clients I work with. (You know who you are).

Interested in 1:1 coaching? Comment on this post and let’s get started.