Physical Fitness
I believe that God wants us to be physically fit—to take good care of the bodies he’s given us (1 Cor 6:19-20), but we need to keep it in proper respective. We shouldn’t mistreat our bodies with sexual immorality, gluttony, substance abuse, any type of chemical addiction, sloth, or bad eating habits. Most people neglect their bodies in at least one of these ways. There are also people who worship their bodies and make physical fitness or appearance more important than their spiritual health. That isn’t right either. (1 Tim 4:8).
When writing Godly Personalities I focused primarily on the top priority of godliness, but I believe physical fitness is a small part of godliness that many of us struggle to achieve. Understanding how your personality preferences influence your struggle can help you succeed.
I can’t begin to address all the different fitness fads and gimmicks that are available, so I’ll stick with the tried and true strategy of diet and exercise. Dieting and exercising have proven difficult for many people because their approach doesn’t fit their personality preferences. Here are some strategies that should give you more success.
One of the greatest struggles for Extroverts (E’s) in changing eating habits and exercising is the loneliness of it all. You need to find someone to share in your journey. Extroverts have a much higher success rate if they share the experience with people. You might want to exercise with a friend, join a health club, or try a personal trainer. If you’re changing your diet get family members or some friends to make the change with you and talk frequently about it. Discuss what you want to change in your eating habits, why, how successful it’s going, your failures, your feelings, etc. You’re making a fundamental change in your lifestyle. Struggling alone will sap your energy, but sharing the experience with others throughout your day every day can energize you to continue. If you can’t find others to join you at least find someone to discuss your experience with. Even after making healthy lifestyle habits part of their daily routine, E’s may need to share those habits with someone else to keep them from slipping away. Daily routines are usually labor-some for E’s (especially EP’s) if they aren’t shared.
Introverts (I’s) like myself tend to enjoy the quiet and solitude of most exercise routines. I love to run. I think clearly while I’m running and often pray while I run. Running with a friend is okay sometimes, but usually I prefer to run alone. Some introverts do better if they share their efforts with someone who can help motivate them and hold them accountable to their commitments, but they don’t need the continuous social contact that E’s need to keep their mental energy level up. At least for exercise—changing eating habits might be more successful if you have family members or a roommate making the changes with you. Once I’s form new exercise and eating habits they don’t need constant social interaction to continue those habits. The healthy behaviors become part of their private life-style that they naturally continue.
Our natural tendency toward pleasure seeking and gluttony can pull any of us into unhealthy eating habits. Sensors (S’s) are more vulnerable here because they habitually trust their senses, including taste and their instinctive appetite. Intuitives (N”s) also use their sensing function and can be swayed by the powerful pull of taste and appetite, but their N preference helps them connect eating habits to poor health with a view toward future consequences. Regardless of your S/N preference you need frequent reminders from your intuitive function to overpower unhealthy eating desires. Consciously make those mental connections to build motivation. Your N function can serve as the proverbial angel on your shoulder to keep your path straight.
If you prefer feeling (F) decisions your strength is faithfulness to personal values. Accepting personal fitness as a scripturally sound and high priority value will give you the motivation you need to persist. Just make sure you follow through and act on it or it will become a source of guilt. Guilt can backfire, driving you further from you goals instead of closer. With the F preference it’s vital that your values move you to action!
Objective reasoning provides strength to thinkers (T’s). If you prefer T, use cause and effect reasoning to establish a mental paradigm that places exercise and healthy eating at the foundation of physical fitness. Physical fitness contributes to your mental, emotional, spiritual, and social health.
As a judger (J) you tend to keep your life scheduled and controlled. If your J preference is clear you can simply schedule an exercise routine into you life and follow it. You can also establish a system for dieting and make that part of your daily routine.
Perceivers (P) struggle to establish and stick with such routines. Their spontaneous nature makes them more impulsive with food choices and inconsistent in their workouts. With a P preference you might benefit from adding variety to your fitness program. Give yourself a lot of healthy food choices, and be spontaneous in exercising those choices. You just need to eliminate unhealthy options. Develop an assortment of workouts to spice up your exercise. If you run or ride a bicycle you can map out several different routes and choose the one that suits your fancy each time you go. If you lift weights at a gym come up with 3 or 4 different routines and rotate through them.
I’m a perceiver and I actually use a mix of J and P strategies to maintain my fitness. For exercise I run in the forests behind my home. I have 2 different routes and I choose my route impulsively each time I run. I occasionally vary those routes slightly. Since I live in Northern Michigan the scenery changes dramatically with the seasons and I frequently see wildlife while I run so running never seems like a boring routine. For about 3 months each winter when the snow is deep I run in the road and that gets a little repetitive. To mix things up I occasionally run through the woods in my boots or with snowshoes on, but that is very strenuous. In addition to running I do abdominal crunches, push-up, and chin-ups/pull-ups. I alternate these 3 exercises each day, Mon-Sat and take a rest on Sundays. I also have 3 different stretching routines that I alternate through. So I have an exercise routine for every day of the week except Sunday (the J part) that I vary with a plethora of choices (the P part) and it works very nicely for me.
One other note on exercise—I make anti-lazy choices every day. When parking my car I don’t look for the closest space. I find a reasonably convenient space and park. The walking is good exercise, especially if I’m carrying something that’s not exceptionally heavy. On my hobby farm I cut firewood to heat our home and split it with a 6 pound splitting mall. It warms me when I cut it, when I load it into my truck, when I unload it, when I split it, when I carry it into the house, and when I burn it. J I also get a lot of exercise stacking hay bales and other miscellaneous farm chores. I often choose to do routine chores the old-fashioned way using muscle power instead of relying on power tools (raking leaves instead of blowing them; shoveling snow instead of using a power snow-thrower, etc.) Making lifestyle choices that require you to exercise your body can make a big difference in your health.
Now for eating, I try to eat healthy but my P nature makes it difficult for me to monitor and control my diet closely. I’m a very clear P who needs to keep my options open or I’m miserable. So the “J” routine I use applies more to the way I eat than the details of what I eat. No food is completely eliminated from my diet, but my eating routine increases the amount of healthy food I consume and decreases the quantity of unhealthy food while making all of them more enjoyable. I start every meal with vegetables. That’s when I’m hungriest and my hunger makes the vegetables taste better. I eat vegetables until they take the edge off my appetite, then I eat my meal which usually includes another serving of vegetables along with whatever main dish and side dishes I’m eating. I eat fruit at the end of the meal because I like fruit, even when I’m not real hungry. If I feel like eating desert I always eat some fruit first. My fruits and vegetables are usually fresh, plain, and uncooked. I actually like them best that way; they’re healthy and easy to prepare that way too—just wash them and eat them. Deserts usually taste so good that I enjoy them even if I’m no longer hungry, but since I'm not hungry I'm satisfied with a smaller serving. Occasionally, if the main dish was something I really like a lot, I’m so full I loose interest in dessert. Developing this structured approach to eating meals required me to use my J attitude, but it leaves a lot of flexibility in what I eat, satisfying my P preference.
I enjoyed an unexpected parenting benefit with this approach to meals also. Because my kids all ate their veggies at the start of meals, when they were hungriest, they eat more and have developed a favorable impression of vegetable flavors. When you eat something repeatedly with an elevated appetite it reinforces positive feelings in your brain. Consequently my kids all like veggies much more than their peers. I also enjoy the flavor of the vegetables I eat much more than I used to when I ate them later in my meals. The positive mental imprinting is strong enough that I find myself craving raw vegetables when I don’t get them.
There are countless strategies to physical fitness. Perhaps you’ve tried a few with little success. My advice is to keep trying, but whatever approach you try, tailor it to suit your personality. The sin of laziness may be your biggest enemy in getting started, especially for I’s. If not laziness, it may be busyness, especially for E’s. In either case, it’s worth the effort to overcome these obstacles. Don’t give up. Eventually you’ll find a strategy that fits the personality gift your creator blessed you with.