Well you do! Time is a reason why people do not add exercise to their daily lives. Once you start finishing up your degree and then find a meaningful relationship, then say babies happen. There goes exercise for most people, especially women. For single parents it is very challenge to keep it all together but it is very doable no matter what situation you are in.
Lets look at some different variables and see if in the end we can find some time for exercise.
1. If you happen to be a parent remind yourself if you do something for yourself it only makes you a better parent.
There is nothing to feel guilty about. When your body feels good, your mind feels good which means more patience and better decision making when parenting. If you live and breathe your child, it is very suffocating and you can lose yourself along the way and you will not feel good which means your emotional mind will be the driver of your life. That is problematic for parenting, your logical mind should drive the bus (your life) more often than not. Take care of you first in order to take care of others. Get your mind in the right place and then you will be open to adding exercise to your life of any amount of time.
2. Exercise might look a little different at first for everyone trying to add exercise into their busy lives.
It might be getting x amount of steps per day aka increasing your N.E.A.T (Non-exercise activity thermogenesis) activity OR an at home band/dumbbell/stability ball/floor online workout for 20-30 minutes OR a long dog walk OR yoga, etc. Literally anything is better than nothing.
3. Living to work is not living. PERIOD.
(WARNING Random tangent coming) One exception is if you are on a plan like F.I.R.E (Financial Independence Retire Early). If you are on this plan, you are working to save and be financially independent and debt free so you can have endless amounts of time available for whatever you want. BUT you should still have some kind of health and fitness plan in place as well. Because who cares if you are financially independent when your health is failing. It defeats the purpose of doing all that work to get financially independent only to be physically ruined and you cannot enjoy the free time you worked so hard for. You know?
4. Schedule it.
Some of you who are incredibly busy and have your physical activities listed on your calendar to view, which makes this easy to find time for some type of movement. For the others less organized, start to incorporate habits of someone who is busy and how they would be successful, like scheduling. Use your phones calendar or an old school paper calendar book and write/type things down, week before, night before; whatever will help you be more successful with finding the available time.
Starting this scheduling habit will help you tremendously so your mind is more at ease. The mind likes patterns anyways and schedules and calendars are an organized pattern. Remember to schedule rest days or days where you are either checked out of your schedule or reduced tremendously, are also a part of any successful active persons schedule. Always living on a schedule can be daunting and a mental drag which is why the scheduled rest or check out time should be a “thing” in your life.
5. Changing priorities.
Your health, physical and mental, is important. Aging is happening to everyone. No one has been able to escape it. BUT you can slow it done and be prepared for this life change, from a position of strength, by prioritizing your health and fitness, when you cannot fall back on your youth. Incorporate better eating habits and not dieting and any kind of movement is good movement. Being a mindful person of what you eat, move and overall, how you care for yourself, serves not just yourself but those close to you and perhaps you even help a friend or coworker in the process by being a role model.
Of course everyone’s situation is unique but this is a good starting point with moving some things around in the mind or in the schedule to find time to move. Remind yourself, you need to take care of you in order to take care of others OR you need to take care of you because we are all aging and you need to prepare for those older years when the luxury of youth is not available. Plan to win, right?
There are definitely other situations to go on about and if you happened to be in a place mentally where you cannot see a ray of light for exercise, sometimes a fresh pair of eyes can help.
Write a reply if you need help finding a solution for exercise of any form or to schedule a complimentary consultation email at info@fit-appeal.com.
Thank you again for reading and chat soon!
Coach Tanya
