It’s been a while since I was in a good exercise routine. A year of living/cruising on a sailboat full-time is quite the hurdle to such practices. Unbeknownst to me until I got a recent body scan, I gained a flabby 15 pounds. Seeing that data made me viscerally angry, so back to the gym I went.

Something I am doing to be more analytical about the whole process is logging every calorie in the Fitbit app. My Google Pixel Watch tracks every calorie burned, and I get to see my deficit at the end of the day. The knowledge is empowering, and hitting daily goals is addicting. It’s a good combo.

Normally, I have difficulty doing things like adhering to strict diets and completing tedious, daily tasks like logging meals, but now that I’m back in a regular exercise routine, there’s a powerful benefit that I’m noticing (again), and it’s all about the intangible. It’s the halo effect.

This halo effect has dramatic benefits that go far beyond the measurable benefits of calorie burn and strength gain. It fills me with energy that sustains me throughout the day. It motivates me to stick to my diet, and log each calorie.

And I can’t stress enough that when I’m in a good exercise routine, this extra motivation seems to just be there. With it, I also do not have the desire to eat junk that I know is going to undermine the effort I’ve spent in the gym. It just doesn’t feel as hard to make better health choices than it does when I’m not exercising. It’s NOT that I feel like the temptation is as strong as it’s ever been and I’m better at resisting it. It truly does just get easier.

Then the downstream benefits of this compound. I exercise, and because I exercise I want to eat healthy, and because I exercise and eat healthy I have more energy, and because I have more energy, I perform better at work AND have energy to work on personal projects, like this blog, and so on and so forth.

So this is a reminder to self that I like exercise not just for the measurable strength gain and fat loss, but for its halo effect, which ultimately makes the rest of my life just plain better.