How to find the motivation to Exercise - by someone who doesn't enjoy exercise for those who struggle to get motivated

This is not your average 'you should exercise daily' post written by a super-human crazy gym person who loves exercising.

To be honest, I don't generally enjoy exercising, although it depends on what I'm doing, but that doesn't change the fact that I NEED to exercise (dammit). I have personally experienced the benefits of exercise (even through my very minor attempts). I don't particularly enjoy exercise when I'm doing it, but I always ALWAYS enjoy the feeling afterwards - accomplishment, calmness, soreness (in a good way), determination and motivation. The funny thing is that when I start exercising, I want to keep exercising. For example, I took some time off from the gym (couldn't be bothered, felt unmotivated, was 'too busy' - the usual excuses) during my university semester and had vowed to 'get back into it' as soon as I was on holiday. However as they always seem to, more excuses appeared - I went to Bali for a week immediately after I finished my semester (legitimate excuse really) and when I got back I was feeling exhausted from my trip (during which I had basically tanned around the pool and drunk cocktails 60% of the time...) and just needed to give myself time to 'rest' (lie at home and catch up on my TV series or visit friends). So, I was again unmotivated and unable to convince myself to exercise.

Anyway, long story short (or not so short) my friend convinced me to go to a yoga class with her at the gym (I know, it doesn't sound like much) and I actually did! Two days passed and we went to another gym class together. All this high-powered exercise and gym motivation (ha ha) gave me the idea to start a health and fitness diary. I had a look around the internet, got some ideas and decided to create my own! I created a diary with four components - progress, exercise, food and most importantly, goals. This allowed me to record my meals, workouts and measurements among other things, and most importantly allowed me to create both long and short-term goals with incentives to keep me motivated and excited about my new exercise journey.

You can get my diary by following this link: https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/175852192/health-and-fitness-diaryplanner-record?ref=shop_home_active_1

So here I am, a week later, having gone to five classes in total (which might not seem like much to some but hey, it's something!), filling in my health and fitness diary daily (which is proudly stuck on my bedroom wall) and having just signed up for a 3-week challenge at my gym! So what I'm trying to say here is, if you have trouble with motivation, start off small (every little bit counts), get yourself an annoying gym or exercise buddy who will push you to exercise, and give yourself small goals and incentives to keep going; it really is that simple (TRUST me, if I can do it YOU can do it!).