Be sure to listen to the audio companion to this post by pressing play below:

If you’re like most people, you have recently made some sort of resolution to exercise or lose weight. And probably, if you really are like most people, that resolution may or may not have been kept so far. Or at all.

After all, life does tend to get in the way, doesn’t it? Work gets in the way. Birthdays get in the way. Family gets in the way. Pretty much everything gets in the way and stops you from exercising or eating better.

Or maybe, you keep reading blogs like this one, making sure that you’re running the right way, lifting enough weight, using the proper resistance setting on the elliptical. You keep researching how to exercise your body instead of actually exercising it.

Stop it

So let me echo Schmidt and Cece here: “Please, stop.”

As happy as I am that you’re here reading this post (perhaps giddy is the correct term), you need to stop it. Stop reading about working out and go work out. Reading and researching bodyweight workouts has a time and a place, but if you never actually get around to doing them, you’re just wasting time.

So stop making excuses and do something. Do anything. Stop reading about running–lifting, CrossFit, yoga, whatever–and just do it. Lace up your tennies, put on your weight belt, stand up from your desk and do some stretches. Anything.

I don’t care what you do. I don’t care if you go outside and pace around your yard, if you head to the gym to deadlift more than I weigh, or if you just sit down at the dinner table and not eat that cupcake for dessert.

Whatever it is, just do it.

I repeat: stop making excuses and do something.

As Runner’s World basically says, stop overthinking it. Just go out and exercise.

You want a lifestyle change? Lifestyle change comes through small steps and determination. That’s it and that’s all. All the reading and research and good intentions and resolutions and goals in the world can’t help you if you never break a sweat.

So…go break a sweat.