Fitness influencer Kelsey Wells used to hate exercise. Here's how adding 1 minute to her workouts changed everything.

• Personal trainer Kelsey Wells used to see exercise as a form of punishment, she said.
• However, it's now a source of empowerment for the trainer.

Kelsey Wells knows what it's like to hate working out.

"I hated exercise of all kinds. I just felt like it was the ultimate chore," she told Insider.

But, fast forward a decade and Wells is a personal trainer, Sweat app coach, and fitness influencer with just shy of three million Instagram followers. She's also been working out regularly — and enjoying it — for nearly nine years, she said.

What changed?

It was a combination of finding a form of exercise she enjoyed (strength training) and working on her mindset, reframing exercise from a source of punishment to empowerment.

Wells said she used to see exercise as a way to shrink her body rather than a way to improve her physical and mental health. This meant she never enjoyed it and thus never stuck to it consistently. But once she started working to change her mindset, it became more positive not just towards exercise but her life as a whole, Wells said.

Working out more intentionally also helped her get better results from her workouts, meaning she made faster progress in terms of strength and fitness, and enjoyed it more, she said.

Insider previously reported that the idea that exercise should be a form of punishment, including after enjoying an indulgent meal, is instilled in many of us as children. But not only is it unscientific, as exercise burns fewer calories than people think, it also actually puts people off exercising and reaping its benefits in the first place.

Now Wells is on a mission to help other women change their own mindset. Making the switch, she said, could come down simply to adding a minute to your workout.

"We aren't born into this life hating our bodies. We aren't born thinking we're not enough," Wells said. "But once you accept where you are with that relationship with yourself and exercise, you can take action and choose to change it."

How to add intention, mindfulness, and gratitude to your workout in 1 minute

Reframing how you think about exercise doesn't just happen but requires conscious effort, Wells said. In fact, some days she still has to work at it, she said.

Wells' Redefine Fitness program, found on the Sweat app, is designed to help women do this with tangible steps.

"It's the strength training that I'm known for, but I also take the key things that I identified actually helped me heal my own relationship with exercise," she said.

All it takes is one more minute.

"You add 60 seconds to your workout and you'll make any workout successful," Wells said. "Not because you're hitting a personal best, but because you are moving your body to care for yourself and your health. And at the end of the day, that is the point."

There are three key components in each workout:

• 30 seconds spent setting your intention at the start of the workout: Such as: "I do this session to care for myself and my health" or "I am moving my body out of gratitude and respect for my body."
• Affirmations during one or two rest periods: Such as "I am strong" or "I am more than my body."
• 30 seconds of gratitude at the end

The 30 seconds at the start is designed to help people set a healthy intention for their workout, redefine their "why," or their motivation for working out, while doing some breath work to help tune into the body, Wells said.

Wells said: "It is your reminder and decision to workout from a positive place, and to care for your health, as opposed to punishing or shrinking yourself, or doing it solely for aesthetics.

"It helps you acknowledge that you are worthy of investing this time and energy into caring for yourself and your health — and is what ultimately can help set you up for long-term success when it comes to fitness and your overall health and wellbeing."

The breathwork needn't be specific but is simply to help you get in the right mindset for your workout.

"We focus on breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth at whatever pace is comfortable, but it's really the intention-setting that matters most during the start of each workout," Wells said.

The affirmations come at certain moments in each workout and help people check back in with their bodies and remind themselves of their intention.

"And at the end you take a moment of gratitude for your body and you put one hand on your heart, one hand on your belly, you take a deep breath, and you say thank you to your body for everything, for getting through that workout, for carrying you through every day," Wells said.

Studies suggest that people who practice gratitude in general tend to be happier and less depressed.

Being mindful in workouts helps you create your own narrative

The reason infusing mindfulness into workouts can help change someone's mindset is that it allows you to create your own positive narrative, meaning you don't have space for negative thoughts, Wells said.

"It prevents you from negatively associating exercise with the toxic rhetoric that you might have adhered to before," Wells said. "If you're focusing on your breathing, you don't have time to tell yourself you're not strong enough, you're not good enough, you are weak."

While some people are skeptical at the start, Wells said she's had many messages from people who say it's helped them "rewrite the script."

It won't necessarily change over night, though.

"If you can't get to a place where you're doing this workout out of celebration for your body, out of love for yourself, that's OK," Wells said. "But you can certainly choose to move your body out of respect for it. You can certainly choose to do this to care for yourself and your health on a base level."

Ultimately, however the mindset change has to come from within the person, not from anyone else.

"No one can change your life. Only you can do that," Wells said.