In a picture-perfect world, we’d all have at least an hour a day to devote to our fitness lifestyle. However, in the real world, 24 hours a day doesn’t seem like nearly enough time to fit in work, school, family and everything else that comes at us 100 kilometres per hour! Stop! Relax. Stressing won’t help.
It’s much easier than you think: it’s about creating or seizing opportunities to exercise. Here are 12 simple tips to sneak a workout in or make a health change and all can easily be slipped into your super busy schedule.
1) Become an Ad break warrior – Stand up and move around between the ad breaks. One of the best exercises for this is Shadow Boxing.
2) Exercise in front of the TV – admit it, you do watch you favourite show! Funny how we can fit that in! Invest in a stationary exercise bike, elliptical, treadmill or mini tramp. You might as well be on one of these purposely build home fitness equipment solutions than sitting on your couch!
3) Facebook time – how many of you find time to check Facebook but not exercise? Make Facebook time equal “In Motion Time”. Buy an exercise bike with an iPad holder and sit on your bike and pedal away while keeping up with your friends.
4) Get active at your desk – purchase a DUO bike, which can comfortably fit under your desk. Pedal away and no one will ever be the wiser!
5) Take the stairs – this one never gets old, it works so just do it!
6) Park & Walk – Like taking the stairs select the car park further away from your destination and walk. Guess what? In the time you spend driving around looking for the closer car park, you would already have parked at the farther away car park and walked to your destination!
7) Move every hour – Stand and move around. Walk around your chair, do chair squats or take a 5-minute walk. Any form of movement, which re-engages your body’s muscles is what you are looking for.
8) Change into your workout gear before you leave work – you will be surprised how well this works. By the time you get home, you are in the mind set to train rather then get home, sit down, relax then say “I’ll exercise tomorrow night”!
9) Prep your meals on a Sunday – you will be amazed how much time this saves you and you will get an added bonus: your selections of food ensure you eat better for the week than take-aways, café meals or just a latte.
10) Walk the Talk – As your kids, wife, husband or your bestie tell you about their day, spend your time walking together: this will benefit everyone. Create this space in your life.
11) Opt for Functional Fitness – these exercises simulate our body’s everyday movements and feel natural.
12) Drink more water – On rising have a glass of water and to help you drink water throughout the day grab a Sippo Cup. This little beauty reminds you to drink (when you are too busy to remember!)
The choice is yours! Yes changing old habits can be hard. However, what is harder is not being able to. If you are not happy with the way things are then you need to make changes to get a different result.
Rochelle Finch is a Health and Weight Management Consultant with a background in Psychology. Her training and lifestyle advice aims at enhancing both the physical and mental health of her customers. Rochelle advocates the use of quality fitness equipment in order for her clients to achieve their goals (Elite Fitness Equipment).
