In this day and age, there’s no debate that there are a dozen things that require your attention. Family. Work. Friends. Hobbies. Before you know it, your calendar is full and you barely have time to do anything other than breathe. With so many things in your life, it’s easy to let some things slip through the cracks. It’s important that you don’t let fitness be one of those things. The long-term effects of not prioritizing it will become clear the older you get.
The Importance of Fitness
There’s no getting around the fact that physical activity is vital to keeping your body healthy and strong, but the positives of staying active are often more wide reaching than most people realize. There are a wide variety of benefits to keeping yourself active including but not limited to:
- Weight management
- Improve mental health
- Decrease risk of cardiovascular disease
- Strengthen your muscles
- Improve your bone density
People often associate fitness with gym class from grade school, and all the emotions that went along with it (usually bad ones). It drives people away from physical activity which, in turn, makes them less likely to prioritize it in their busy schedule. You shouldn’t do that. Keeping up with a fitness routine has both present day and future benefits when it comes to keeping you healthy and ready to take on the world. You’d be surprised that even little steps can go a long way.
How to Include It In Your Life
Once you’ve decided that you need to make time in your life to be more active, you most likely come across another problem: How exactly do you make time for that? In this day and age, most people’s lives are incredibly busy, and the thought of fitting in a session at the gym between the end of work and heading home for dinner with the family seems exhausting. So, even though it’s important, how do you prioritize it?
The good news is that once you build the habit of including fitness in your routine, it’s a lot easier to be consistent. You need to focus on building that habit up, which takes discipline. Even a few at-home exercises will help.
Choose Something You Enjoy
Many people view fitness as a necessary part of their life that they don’t really like but have to do to stay healthy. Running and lifting weights are the most popular exercises and tend to be the ones that cause the most dread when people head to the gym. If you’re dreading your upcoming workout, it’s going to be hard to convince yourself that spending your time there is actually worth it. The important thing to remember, however, is that you don’t have to do exercises you hate in order to stay in shape.
If you don’t like running on the treadmill, don’t do it. There are plenty of other ways to work on your cardio like swimming, dancing, cycling, and even walking. There are also more ways to build up your strength than just simply lifting weights. It’s important to find activities that you actually enjoy rather than forcing yourself to do something because you think you’re supposed to.
Be Reasonable
In the age of social media, it’s easy to look at fitness influencers and decide that you’re going to look exactly like them. That is often not possible (even though their content is designed to make you believe that). Most fitness influencers don’t have a job other than their social media, which means they have significantly more time to dedicate to fitness than you do. Additionally, they may not have the same body type as you, which means what works for them may not work for you no matter how hard you try.
There’s also the element of good nutrition that plays a large role in how these influencers look online. They have the money and time to spend on making their meals (and in some cases, a personal chef!). With a very busy life, it’s hard to dedicate that time and effort to every meal you eat. You only have so much time in a day. It’s important to keep that in mind as you scroll through fitness influencers online.
Meet yourself where you are. If you haven’t gone to the gym consistently in years, start with one or two days a week doing simpler exercises to build up the habit. If you know you have a Wednesday afternoon meeting that tends to run over into the evening, don’t plan to head to the gym in the time that’s normally taken up by that meeting. You know your limits best, and setting unrealistic goals is a quick way to discourage you from even trying.
Make a Plan
Before you ever step foot into a gym, you need to make a plan for what you’re going to do. It’s very easy to use the lack of a plan as an excuse to not head to the gym after work. Even if you do make it to the gym, you don’t want to spend half of the limited time that you’re there figuring out what you’re going to do. Having a plan helps you focus on what you need to do, and removes some of the mental load that these decisions require.
Everyone’s workout plan will look different because everyone has different capabilities and goals when it comes to their fitness journey. For some, they set a workout plan for an entire month at once while others set one week to week. If you’re training for something in particular (ex. a 10k), you can find training plans online that break down what you need to be doing week by week with how much time you have until the event. If you work with a personal trainer, they’ll work with you on your goals and set a plan for each session you have.
If you don’t have something to train for or someone to work with, you might find it hard to make a plan. The great thing about the internet is that there are hundreds of sources that you find to help you! It’s important to keep in mind that it’s easy for someone to get on the internet and claim that they’re a fitness expert without any experience whatsoever. Do your research on who you’re taking advice from and remember that fitness does not have a one size fits all solution. Make sure you keep in mind your abilities and what small amount of time you have to exercise when making your workout plan.
Be Flexible
Even the best laid plans don’t end up working out. That’s just a fact, and when you’re incredibly busy, it’s unavoidable that things will come up and interfere with your plans to head out for a run before work. It’s important, however, that you don’t just skip your designated workout time completely. That can set you back when it comes to solidifying the habit and meeting your fitness goals.
Depending on your situation, there are certain things you can do. If you sleep through your alarm and miss your morning run, consider running that evening after dinner instead. If you end up having to work late and miss your workout class, see if there’s another one that weekend that you can go to instead. If your meeting runs a little late and you can only squeeze a 30 minute workout in instead of the hour long one that you planned, that’s fine. Something is better than nothing. Do your best to try and fit your workout in somewhere else in your schedule. It’s much easier to break a habit than to maintain one.
Combine It With Something Else
If you’re having trouble carving time out of your schedule to go to the gym after work, that’s not something that should stand in your way. You can build it into your schedule in a variety of ways, including combining it with something else. Many people have taken to adding a walking pad beneath their desk, so they can “get their steps in” while working throughout the day. Look at what you already do during the day, and see if there’s a way to make it more active. Even a little bit can go a long way.
Find an Accountability Partner
If you’re struggling with keeping yourself accountable when it comes to staying active, a great way to change this is to connect with other people who are also committed to their fitness goals. This can look very different depending on what your fitness goals are. Run clubs are a great way to meet people and establish a consistent running schedule at the same time. Going to the same group workout class (pilates, yoga, etc.) every week forces you into a schedule while also helping you meet people who are working toward a similar goal to you. Any sort of group setting gives you (and everyone around you) reasons to keep moving forward both due to the encouragement from others and the subconscious psychological fear of being left behind.
However, you don’t need to join a group to have this sort of accountability if you don’t want to. Make a deal with a friend to go to the gym at certain times during the week, so you both can help and challenge each other to be better throughout the workout. Having some sort of accountability system makes it much easier to fit fitness into your routine since others are counting on you as well.
Something Is Better Than Nothing
At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that even a little bit of exercise is better than nothing. According to the CDC, just under half of US adults get the recommended amount of exercise, so it’s important that you at least make an attempt at fitting exercise into your general lifestyle. Every little bit helps.
If you can only fit in two 30 minute sessions per week at the gym, that’s still better than not going. If something comes up and you’re stuck at work late, going on a walk during your lunch break is a better alternative than skipping your evening run entirely. It all depends on you. Don’t compare yourself to others, and remember that perfection is the enemy of progress. Focus on doing what you can to make your life more active every day.
