Probably best to start with a small amount of exercise then. Like one to five minutes.

You certainly don’t want to deplete your resources to the point of making the rest of your life undoable.

One thing I’ve found useful is to study the different resources that the body uses. This can be abstract concepts like “willpower” down to concrete molecular energy reserves like “glycogen”. Both the concrete and the abstract concepts have been studied by science, and there are models of how they work.

In my own day to day, I pay attention to:

• Willpower
• Hydration
• Sleep
• Mental conflict such as results from unresolved moral conundrums
• Potassium
• Glycogen
• Total calories

It’s also a fact that exercise will, over time, tend to increase the capacity of the various “energy” stores one has access to. It will improve willpower, concentration, flexibility, glycogen, oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, mitochondrial health, etc.

But doing too much (which at the beginning can be just a little bit) can definitely cause problems. Especially if that willpower budget is small.

If I were in your situation, where exercise was likely to push me over the limit and deplete my willpower budget (and other resources) to the point where I failed in other parts of life, I would start extremely small with the exercise routine. Like one push-up. I mean tiny.

People ask “what’s the point” to something that small. The point is that it’s a stepping stone to being able to do more.

Of course, you also gotta make sure you’re eating enough, getting plenty of sleep, getting all the nutrients you need, etc.

Also (and I know this comment is all over the place) meditation can increase willpower budget over time.

Big, drastic changes can be overwhelming and can set a person back. This is why baby steps are recommended. “Baby steps” means basically tiny steps. Tiny changes. One push-up per day. Maybe curl 1 lb, once a day.

Baby steps are steps that, themselves, don't change one’s life. But what they do is they open the door for larger steps that can change one’s life.