Busy lives make it difficult to fit exercise in. But here’s the deal, saying your busy is more or less an excuse. Deep down you know it’s true. Reality check, we can often find the time for fun things, going out to lunch with friends, chilling on the sofa, maybe catching up with mates after work. But when it comes to exercise, all of a sudden we are too busy. The problem with exercising is that for most people, it just isn’t fun.
 
I could go on about you delving into your deepest darkest thoughts and getting in touch with yourself to find out why you aren’t exercising but I’m not going to. I could also share all the benefits you get from exercising, lowering your cholesterol, heart disease, improving your mood, type 2 diabetes, weight loss, better sleep, improving your sex life – but I’m not going to. 
 
The reason? Pretty simple really, you know and I know that exercising is damn good for you. Period.

Here are some stats.

60% of adults are not regularly active.
25% of adults are not active at all.
 
So that being said,  you need to find ways to fit exercise in, some ideas:
 
1. Schedule time for yourself.
Sit down and write out your schedule for a typical day and week. Now take a good look at it and see if you can move things around a little. I found there were things I didn’t really need to do on a particular day, it had just become a habit in a way.
 
Find small pockets of time throughout the day and extend from there. You will find as time goes by that you actually enjoy these short ‘timeouts’ and will actively start finding ways to create more pockets of time.

2. Incidental exercise.

  • Fit exercise into your day rather than fitting your day around exercise; ie pushups in the office every hour.
  • Take the dog or kids to the local park, beach and look for ways to exercise. For example, park benches are a great workout aid. You can do pushups, tricep dips, step ups, etc.
  • Kid activities – join in! If they have monkey bars or similar and they look strong enough to hold an adult (most modern play equipment sites are) then get in there! Probably best to not to do this if the play area is active with lots of kids though.
  • Chase the dog! It’s fun, they love it – you will get your heart rate up. Everyone man, woman and dog wins.
  • Take the stairs. Even two flights of stairs climbed per day can lead to 2.7 kg weight loss over one year.
  • Park the car further away from your destination and walk.  

    • 20%-40% of people dread or hate exercising. 
    People commit for a week or two but motivation lessens leaving them back where they started. Emotionally this can be quite devastating because you see it as a failure.
     
    For those who hate the very thought of exercising, you have to find a way to make it fun. Using some of the above strategies may work for you.  

    You have to look for opportunities to exercise. Stop saying no to offers of getting out and about, you will find being more active inspires you to want to exercise more. 
     
    Challenge yourself. 
    I like to write down what exercise I’ve done for the day. Right now I do 15 push-ups an hour at work plus as many as I can at the park that night. I’m struggling a bit as the day goes on so my challenge right now is to build up my stamina and then increase from 15 to 20. 
     
    You have to make yourself a priority. 
    With the financial market being the way it is, many people are feeling pressured to work longer and harder to keep their job security. 

    You need to be aware though that this comes at a price, YOU!

    Think of it this way, if you feel the pressure is on at your work place, then it’s more important than ever to get yourself in a good physical and mental place.

    Endurance is important and if you take care of yourself first then you will be able to put more into your work. You will find that your switched on mentally, able to cope with stress better and not feel quite so tired after a long, hard day.
     
    Task: I spend around 5 hours per day watching TV.
    So how many hours do you watch TV for? This week, make an effort to remember how many hours per week you watched TV. The reason for this? If you can sit in front of  TV then you can be doing exercise.
     

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