All year I’ve been writing about self-care and self-love and taking good care of yourself (take my self-care quiz if you haven’t already to see how you stack up!). I’ve noticed that when I’m in a groove with my fitness — for me that means making it to the gym regularly or getting outside for a walk a few times a week — I tend to be a calmer, happier person. I’m not snapping at my kids, my husband’s not getting on my nerves as much and my clients are not as demanding. Being physically active makes me better able to cope with what’s going on in my world at any given time. For those 30 minutes of my workout, I’m not stressed. It’s the only time of day where my mind is completely clear. And I need that.
I realize it is not easy to keep fitness top of mind. Particularly when you’re having an extremely busy week and you’re tired from everything else you had to do. But once I realized that practically every week as a busy week, I decided I had to fit in my workouts, tired or not. Here’s three tips that have helped me get off the couch:
1) Do it first.
I find the only way for me to be semi-consistent with my fitness routine is to schedule it in the beginning of my day. I tried for a while to do 6 a.m. workouts but that just made my day too long and I’d be sluggish by 7 p.m. So now I work out at 9 a.m. and am home, showered and ready to work by 10.
If you struggle with working out consistently, putting it first inherently makes it feel more like a priority. It becomes an urgent item on your to-do list, not a “if I can fit it in” item.
2) Do it often.
I still struggle with this one, but for me, it is better for me to walk around the block for 15 minutes at a leisurely pace every day, than it is to struggle to try to fit in 5 hour-long workouts during my week. Some weeks, it’s just not possible and instead of fitting in what I can, I do nothing and that makes me feel worse. A little exercise beats no exercise.
3) Make sure it’s fun.
One of the reasons that I simply can not do the elliptical anymore is because it bores me to tears. I’m moving but I’m not going anywhere? What kind of mess is that? I like doing a circuit at my gym because I move to a new machine every minute and a half and I switch up the exercises to really challenge myself. If you find that your workouts are boring, guess what? You’re not going to do them, you probably won’t put in your full amount of effort and you won’t see any changes. It’s pretty simple.