Taking care of our health is a non-negotiable factor for longer living. Living a life of perfect health involves a lot of personal effort on an individual’s path, including eating right and having a proper fitness regimen which is strictly adhered to. As important as this may sound, it seems a rather difficult task for many people to keep up to. When it comes to lack of proper exercise schedule, the number one excuse people give for not working out is that they do not have enough time. With the daily pressures of work, family and pursuing a career, many people feel less compelled to put much priority to having regular exercise.
Exercise is rather important because of the innumerable benefits it offers our bodies, among which is the ability to help us live longer and healthier, by ensuring we do not lose a lot of bones and muscle as we age. The benefit of exercise is common knowledge to most people, and they wish they could engage often in it, but they are laid back because there are so many activities all seeking for their attention. Yet among these activities, a fitness program is of utmost importance to sustain a healthy and well balanced life.
If we carefully analyze our lives, we would find out that, if our priorities are properly organized, we would have enough time to do the important things such as exercising. We often focus most of our time on a lot of irrelevant tasks, such as watching TV, reading emails, or chatting for long hours with friends. These tasks are not bad by themselves, but they could be properly prioritized to enable us have enough time to focus on keeping our health together. Being accountable with our time and setting priorities would enable us have time to include a workout schedule.
People complain they don’t have time to exercise because they don’t see it as a priority. They admit it is important, but their failure to workout shows that it is not a priority in their list of activities; because what we actually do is what determines our priorities. Seeing fitness as a priority would change your perspective, ensuring you create time for it no matter your tight schedule. How your time is spent determines the priority you place on something. Carefully planning your time and minimizing the time spent on some other activities would allow you have time to put in on a workout.
With 168 hours in a week, exercise time can easily be included. If you count family time, work time, and sleep time, time should also be reserved for taking care of your health. If the health is neglected, when the body breaks down, we would be forced to take off work and family time just to get our health back. Since this is the case, it is imperative to avoid the body breaking down by taking time to care for our health. It’s sufficient to state that we all have equal hours in a day; what we do with it determines our outcome.
Some ways to make exercising a lifestyle is:
- Hire a qualified fitness professional (and as you can see I’m using the word qualified, not certified, because as I always say, certified does not mean qualified.)
- Set up your fitness goals: You could have a diary or an app on your phone which you use to set up your fitness goals and set reminders to achieve them, setting up the times and days of the week to work out. When we have goals, the rate of achieving them is high.
- Choose your most favorable times of the day: You can fit your workout sessions as the first thing do in the mornings. That way you are not exhausted from work, and it has been planned for earlier on. You could get up earlier in the mornings just to have time to exercise.
- Adjust your timetable: Adjusting your timetable to allow workout time is very paramount. Cut down a little time from some of your usual tasks to have extra time that can be used for exercise. Ensure that the extra time is not used for anything other than exercise.
- Incorporate exercise in your work: While working you could take short breaks of 10-15 minutes to work out even while at the office. Simple exercises such as plank, squats, lunges do not need any special equipment, and can easily be done anywhere.
To make exercise a lifestyle, it is important to be consistent with it. Do it consistently for about a month and you will see how it forms into a habit you will always enjoy doing without much effort.
Exercising is not comfortable but it is necessary. The benefits of engaging in it regularly far outweigh whatever discomfort you may feel initially. Making time for it would go a long way in ensuring we live better and healthier lives.
Time is what we want most, but what we use worst. – William Penn
Recent Comments