> What was worse was that there was no objective way to measure progress so I didn't even know if it was doing anything.
I agree that not being able to measure progress is horribly demotivating. But I find the opposite, that exercise is one of the few areas in my life where I can objectively measure progress. For example:
Body weight
Resting heart rate
5k run time
Longest distance run without stopping
Max weight / number of repetitions / duration for strength exercises
These are all objective measurements which can be tracked over long periods of time and directly correlate with the amount and quality of training that one does. I have found that this is the best long-term way to motivate myself.
Well, only the first two are objective --- the others are all way too subjective, as they depend horribly on how motivated I am. Even the objective measures are hugely variable, so in order to get any actual data, I have to measure trends over months, rather than weeks.
Being told that I need six months' work before anything measurable happens is not really something I find motivating!
One of the things you get to track improvement on with exercise is the ability to motivate yourself. It is part of you improving your physical and mental health, not unwanted noise.
For me when I started exercising seriously I started noticing I was consistently beating my personal bests [1] after about 2 weeks. It doesn't take 6 months. I even started feeling great from the cardio on Day 1.
[1] Running times over a set distance, and amount of pushups/pullups/situps in a row. If I actually recovered properly it would probably take even less time to beat the initial records.
I agree that not being able to measure progress is horribly demotivating. But I find the opposite, that exercise is one of the few areas in my life where I can objectively measure progress. For example:
These are all objective measurements which can be tracked over long periods of time and directly correlate with the amount and quality of training that one does. I have found that this is the best long-term way to motivate myself.