If you've ever started an 'exercise program' for the purpose of relieving a health condition or losing weight and found it very difficult to stick with the program, there's probably a good reason why your determination didn't last...

Your motivation failed because its source wasn't directly connected to the exercise. Simply put, in your mind the exercise was a chore rather than a pleasure.

For most people, the consequences of doing 'chores' have to be fairly immediate for us to continue them. Otherwise, we tend only to do challenging things when they are inherently rewarding.

If you want to stick with it when it comes to exercise, you must find a physical activity that is inherently rewarding for you, and let health and weight loss become and added benefit.

When I first took an interest in getting fit, losing the weight that I'd gained during a recent change to sedentary work, I started with exercise videos. These appeal to some people, especially if you make the workout part of your daily routine, but for me, it was just too much dread.

Next, I decided to make a bigger investment, thinking that would force me to work out. Enter the rowing machine.

I read a statistic somewhere (after I bought mine), that 97% of home exercise equipment purchases get used for less than one month. I don't know if the statistic is true in general, but in my case it was right on.

Even with the inspirational music in my ear and my eye on the view out my daylight basement window, it seemed silly to me to be rowing madly and going nowhere.

I really did want to lose the weight, and I knew that exercise and activity were absolutely necessary - diet alone wouldn't produce long term results. So I kept trying new things.

Membership in a gym: too much hassle and drive time. Yoga classes: the schedules never fit with the rest of my life. If these sound like excuses, they are.

People make excuses when faced with things we really don't want to do. But exercise doesn't have to be dreaded. And that's the message here. Keep checking out new things until you find what works.

What finally got me in the groove was so obvious and easy in retrospect. Walking. I read that the best exercise for changing our metabolism is that which uses the large muscles, rhythmically and continuously. Walking, jogging, bicycling, swimming laps.

I enjoyed walking once I found good trails to use. By walking every day for 45 to 60 minutes, I began to get fit. Once I was in better condition, it was fun to ride bicycle and do other things like playing racquetball and volleyball.

These activities are exercise, and a lot more fun to me than a daily workout video or time on the rowing machine. That's why I continue doing them - to me they are play, not chores, inherently pleasurable, and that's my motivation.

You will have to stay motivated until something clicks for you, but here's the mental difference. In your mind, you are in the process of finding something pleasurable, rather than in the process of completing an onerous daily task.

This is not to say that there won't be times when you have to push yourself a little bit to get going. That is where routine and habit help you. If it is your routine to do something physically active each day, you will eventually feel strange when you have to skip it.

Whatever physical activities you end up sticking with doing, they will likely involve pleasure and a sense of play and accomplishment. That's why you'll stick with them, fitness and losing weight are just bonuses.