I've done my best to like exercise before, but never got into the gym. I'd only get by with not having a car and so walking places, but that's not great exercise.
Recently I've been doing indoor climbing, and it's a lot of fun! I'm much more motivated to stay fit, because I want to get better at it. When I consider eating something that's very energy dense, I try to imagine carrying it with me when I'm trying to get up that wall I've been struggling with.
A friend had a similar experience with soccer, and another with tennis. I think it's not surprising that most people have trouble getting enthusiastic about moving your body purposelessly.
agreed. I recommend people go hiking, biking, rock climbing, play a game of some sort etc. you get the much much greater motivation of social interaction (finding or forming groups to do activities like this isn't very hard) and the negative reinforcement of letting others down if you don't show up.
During lunch today, I had a conversation with my mother about the lives of my younger brothers. She mentioned to me that my brother, who is taking an SAT class, found the practice test he took to be extremely boring. I replied that I was sorry for my brother and that I felt very privileged not to find standardized tests boring. I went on to express my sorrow that I do not know how to inculcate in others the sublime joy I take in solving particularly interesting problems. Much later, I decided to spend an hour exercising, something that I very rarely do. It wasn't until about 45 minutes in that I realized the proper implication of what I had said to my mother - I have the natural advantage in test taking, but my brother has the natural advantage in exercise. The obvious solution was to find a way to find a similar sense of sublime joy in exercise, and make myself remember that I can find it in exercise. I played around with a few things I could do while on the treadmill, and found that rolling my head while walking felt awesome. I'm definitely going to do more of that in the future. It took me far too long to realize it, but when ever you wish you could help someone in some way, ask yourself if you could benefit from the same sort of thing.