Gaining fitness whether you are in your 20s or in your 60s is pretty much the same, everything you need to do in order to shed those pounds and become active happens in your mind. It's this thing called "commitment".
Let's say you watch some movie, which suddenly inspires you to do something with your life, you go all like what can i do to make myself a better person? and then you look down towards your pot belly and go like "yeah, this fat tummy needs to go" so you get all dressed up in your cute little track suit with the running shoes and head out at 3am in the morning for a run in the neighbourhood, dubstep playing in your headphones you are in soldier mode!
You aren't giving up, and by the time your muscles alarm you that they need a rest, you realize that you have been probably running like 7 miles continuously for the past hour, which is quite an achievement, so now you have this pump which makes you feel accomplished and as the sun slowly rises you walk back home with a smile on your face.
Congratulations on your start on the road to fitness. But only one question: How many miles will you run tomorrow? ahh see you haven't thought about that yet and chances are when tomorrow morning comes you will go all like "you know, i ran quite a lot yesterday so i deserve a rest today" while you sit on that sofa munching on that german chocolate cake watching tv.
The day after, your body is still sore as it begs for you to feed it more protein(which serves two basic functions in the body, one is to repair damaged cells and the other to make new cells in this case make new muscle cells in your legs which will allow you to run more) but naive you instead is still shoving useless carbs and sugars into your mouth in the form of pizza and coke further delaying that recovery process.
So today your excuse is sore body, tomorrow it will be that you are too sleepy or busy, the next day you won't even remember to run anymore.
So there you go, all that work you put in that one morning now counts as nothing.
"Ugh, Mateen quit the fuckin' intro and just tell me how to commit to this already!". Okay, here you go.
There are 4 things you need to do in order to gain fitness and maintain it, during which you will build your commitment automatically.
First and foremost, put yourself in an environment which encourages you to achieve your goal in this case a gym or a health center. I can go on and explain the reasons why this is important and all that but that will cost me a few thousand words to write, something you don't wanna read through to be honest. But don't worry after a while you'll know exactly why this is so crucial(in short it will encourage you to exercise even if you don't want to)
Secondly, get a personal trainer. Can't afford one? then find someone who goes to the gym regularly, who can be your gym buddy. You know someone who will pick you up for the gym or you will pick them and you two will go and train together. The importance of this is firstly, that you won't feel intimidated at the gym as you won't be alone and secondly he/she will be the person who pushes you on in those days when you are really sleepy or tired or depressed and don't wanna go to the gym, he/she will do their best to get you in the car and help you keep going.
Thirdly, enjoy yourself or if you can't(like some people who just don't like walking on the treadmill) then distract yourself! You can do this with a number of things, firstly make sure you are in the right attire something in which you feel comfortable exercising and which doesn't limit your body from expressing itself during your workout(like for example Jeans), secondly listen to something on your headphones could be music or an audiobook or radio, just whatever to get your mind off the fact that you are working hard(something your mind doesn't want you to do as it is already used to you sitting your ass on the sofa all day) and thirdly drink coffee before your workout.
Coffee which has caffeine in it does a really good job in boosting your energy levels and making sure that you don't feel tired during or after the workout, it will help you feel euphoria that happy feeling which makes you just enjoy life. Also these days among bodybuilders there is this thing called "pre-workout" it's basically a powder(which consists mainly of caffeine around 200mg) which you mix with water and drink before your workout to give you that boost of energy to lift some heavy weights which you wouldn't normally be able to do if you didn't take it. So coffee is an alternate to that powder and is definitely a yes, before going to the gym but don't worry your coffee probably has around 60 or 80 mg of caffeine which isn't much to affect your fragile heart(if you are over 60) in a bad way as compared to the pre-workout which after consuming makes you go into beast mode for quite a while(as your body has overdosed on caffeine).
And lastly the fourth thing you need to do after you have set yourself up with the above three things, is to search up and learn about nutrition and exercises which will enable you to make wiser choices when deciding what to eat. It will also motivate you into eating healthier foods, as you will start to feel guilty whenever you feel like feasting on some junk food because now you will know exactly how that food affects your body.
That's not it, you need to design a schedule which prioritises your key responsibilities like if you have gym at 7 in the morning and then you have work then you should probably sleep at around 11pm. This will make you more conscious about wasting time which in turn will have a positive impact on your life.
So there you go, do the above four things and then come to me if you still can't commit yourself into losing weight/gaining fitness.
To be honest the beautiful thing about working out is that you get addicted to it after a while, like if you unfortunately have to miss gym for a few days due to an event in your life then your body will automatically go all like "man, you haven't exercised in a while, i sure am missing that feeling of working out" which will in turn prioritize going to the gym in your mind and the next day you definitely will want to make time to go back to working out. You can ask any bodybuilder or weightlifters why do they work out, you will get the same answer "It's addicting". Well because Humans are made to be active, and not to sit on sofas and watch tv shows, your mind and body loves it when you do something it is made to do.
And so i rest my case, enjoy life and live in such a way that tomorrow you won't need to have any regrets.
Mateen.