Sloth: "If I stop now, it's going to be /so much/ harder and more painful to start up again, instead of just keeping on keeping on..."
I had taken "painful" to be intended metaphorically, and meaning only "I don't want to", but some of the comments below are suggesting otherwise. So can I check what you are actually saying: is exercise literally painful for you, in the same sense as a stubbed toe or a bad tooth are painful?
Yes, I meant literally painful.
Before a rather helpful suggestion in this forum, my original plan for a routine was to start with 1 each of a selected set of exercises: jumping jacks, toe-touches, push-ups, etc; then add 1 to each every day, with a goal of 30. (After doing some further reading, I added left-, right-, and front-planks.) Push-ups were my major obstacle - by the time I was doing twenty-odd, the first ten were easy, the next five or six slightly painful, and by the last few my arms were shaking and the muscles /quite/ painful.
Today's magic num...
"Cryonics has a 95% chance of failure, by my estimation; it would be downright /embarrassing/ to die on the day before real immortality is discovered. Thus, I want to improve my general health and longevity."
That thought has gotten me through three weeks of gradually increasing exercise and diet improvement (I'm eating an apple right now) - but my enthusiasm is starting to flag. So I'm looking for new thoughts that will help me keep going, and keep improving. A few possibilities that I've thought of:
Pride: "If I'm so smart, then I should be able to do /better/ than those other people who don't even know about Bayesian updates, let alone the existence of akrasia..."
Sloth: "If I stop now, it's going to be /so much/ harder and more painful to start up again, instead of just keeping on keeping on..."
Desire: "I already like hiking and camping - if I keep this up, I'll be able to carry enough weight to finally take that long trip I've occasionally considered..."
Curiosity: "I'm as geeky a nerd as you can find. I wonder how far I can hack my own body?"
Pride again: "I already keep a hiker's first-aid kit in my pocket, and make other preparations for events that happen rarely. How stupid do I have to be not to put at least that much effort into making my everyday life easier?"
Does anyone have any experience in such self-motivation? Does this set of mental tricks seem like a sufficiently viable approach? Are there any other approaches that seem worth a shot?