Isaac Newton said it best (or least most accurately) “A body in motion tends to stay in motion.” Ain’t that the truth?

Attorneys tend to live sedentary lives, spending much of their time in their offices meeting with clients, preparing briefs and talking on the phone. They also spend time in the car driving.

Such an occupation can quickly lead to extra pounds and reduced stamina. That’s why it’s important for attorneys to stay in shape.

Speaking as a person who has gone to the gym regularly for most of my adult life, when the economy took a nosedive so did my workout schedule.

When I attempted to balance an increased workload with two small children, an impending divorce, and a second business hard hit by the recession, my ability to fit in a trip to the gym hit a brick wall.

Prior to this time, I had been working out five days a week and was in the best “rock-hard-abs” shape of my life. But when hit with the perfect storm of life’s events, I was forced to give up the system that worked for me, and I was lost.

Despite my love of exercise, I’d never felt inspired to work out at home, and while I could put together an effective exercise program using no equipment at all, I just didn’t have the energy or mental motivation to do it.

The irony is that one of the things I had loved most when I was still in my pumped-up workout phase was the boundless energy it gave me the rest of the day. I could lift heavy things, run with my children on the playground and frequently took the stairs two at a time.

But the emotional drain of my divorce and increased stress just zapped my motivation, and while I knew that exercise would give me more energy, day after day I chose stress-eating over exercising.

This resulted in going from being in the best shape of my life at 40 to the worst shape of my life at 42. Had you told me that I could possibly have gotten to a point where I wouldn’t work out for two years straight, I would have thought you had lost all of your marbles.

After all, I had worked out at least three times a week since I was 18. Finding a gym was the first thing I did when I moved to any new town, and I had belonged to at least 10 different gyms in my lifetime. As sick as it sounds to some, I actually love working out.

But as happens to many people, life got the better of me, and I ended up on the wrong side of the exercise continuum – the one that said zero days/week.

Ironically, while I was slowly getting into the worst shape of my life, my 70-year old father was starting to exercise for the first time in his life. He’d always been rather sedentary working in a job that required him to be on his feet for some of the day but spending the remainder of his life in his recliner.

Yet in the years when I had fallen off the workout wagon, he had actually worked his way up to walking three miles and climbing the bleachers of the nearby high school every single day. When I asked him about how he did it, he said he started by walking ¼ of a mile and worked his way up. I was so proud of him.

As for me, I never did gain the desire or discipline to work out at home, but when I was finally able to go back to the gym after a two-year break, my first weeks back were off to a similarly slow start in comparison to where I had been. But over time, just like dear old dad, I was able to work myself back up to where I wanted to be and stay in shape.

We all experience life’s curveballs at one time or another, and even regular exercisers can find themselves having to start over. But the most important lessons for going from sedentary to active are the same no matter what your age or exercise history.

In my next blog post, I will share five keys to increasing your exercise success.

Med League provides medical expert witnesses to trial lawyers. Please call us at (908)788-8227 or contact us today to discuss your next case.

About the Author
Kimberly Stevens is an author, speaker and coach who frees people from their self-imposed traps around food, money, and relationships.

What do you use to keep yourself motivated to stay in shape? Share your ideas. Write a comment below.