We all put on a little bit of weight during the winter, but surely this is not the time of year for exercise. You’re still catching up with work after the Christmas break, and the weather outside is hardly suitable for jogging, but according to personal trainer and co-owner of UNICUS Fitness, a Chicago-based consulting, design, management and programming company for fitness facilities, Frank Nunez, it makes a huge difference to your wellbeing if you work out now instead of waiting until the summer.
You might think that working out when the weather is cold is bad for your muscles, but Nunez says ‘Your muscles don’t know the difference. The thing that gets in the way is the brain and the emotions’. Your brain will quit long before your muscles do, and the likelihood is that you’re just using this ‘muscle wellness’ excuse so you can stop sooner, or not get started in the first place. Nunez says some of his customers can get over the hurdle, ‘But the people who are just sort of semi-interested, they’re always going to find an excuse of not doing it.’
In terms of getting motivated, it’s easier in the summer because everyone is exercising and focusing on weight loss, so there’s more of a social aspect to it. According to Nunez, ‘you cannot think of the process. You have to think of the result. People are so focused on ‘What machine are you doing?’ or ‘What class are you taking?’ They’re thinking so much about that process that once that’s changed, or that’s gone away, or it moves, then they’re kinda lost because they were holding onto the wrong thing. You need to hold onto the result.’ Nunez says if you manage this, even the cold weather won’t stop you achieving great results.
But January is a busy time of year, so what if you simply don’t have the time to exercise? Nunez says this is another way of saying you don’t care about weight loss enough, and ‘Until you say ‘I’m committed and I want this result and I care about that result,’ it’s going to be very hard for peoples’ brains to switch into that.’ He boasts that it only takes up to 18 minutes a day ‘to get people in some of the best shape of their lives’ so long as you commit to making that time. Trying to make it up later when you miss a day isn’t going to work, as Nunez says ‘Your body is not a bank account.’ Instead, he advises telling yourself ‘I’m going to go twice a week consistently’, as consistency is the name of the game, even during the winter.
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