28
Feb, 2018
How to Exercise and Burn Fat on a Busy Schedule
In my fitness and weight loss business, I get to talk with people from all walks of life about their health, fitness, and weight loss goals. Everyone presents a different goal. Lose weight, gain muscle, stick to a diet plan or program, improve their cardiovascular health, or simply to maintain a current fitness level. They all have one common enemy. This enemy is TIME.
This is not going to be news for most of you when I say this. The greatest challenge for most of us, to stay in shape and/or shed weight is not exercising itself but actually being able to fit an exercise program into our busy schedules.
So how do you do it? How do you balance family, career, important errands, relationships, household responsibilities, and working out? I have found that there are five keys that will help you to be able to fit a consistent workout plan into your already busy life.
Schedule your workout
When you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Everyone knows this and has heard it once or twice in their lives. Haphazardly fitting your workouts into your schedule is not going to work. They won’t happen. You will either forget or something else will be more important than your health at that time. Don’t think you’re guilty? If you’ve ever told yourself “I’ll workout as soon as I get some time”, you were in direct violation of this key principle.
In order to set yourself up for success, you will need to take the time to literally write your workouts into your weekly schedule. Make them a non-negotioable priority. An appointment with yourself. It is your health after all!
Set an alarm in your scheduler to alert you an hour before the scheduled workout so you have the time to wrap up whatever you’re doing at the moment or at the very least get things to an acceptable point that you can leave for an hour without everything falling apart.
Right in the midst of all of your appointments, “to-do” lists, etc., should be a written time slot for your weekly workout routine, so that you will never be in the dark as to when you committed to yourself to go.
Utilize the weekend
In order to be effective, you will want to be following your exercise program at least 3 days per week.
Take advantage of the fact that it only takes 3-5 days per week to see results from an effective, workout. One trick to help you complete 3 workouts weekly is to exercise on the weekends. One of the benefits to this course of action is that your schedule is more flexible and under your control during this time.
What it also means is that when the hectic weekdays roll back around, you will only be responsible for working out 1-3 days during the work week.
Keep your workouts as a high priority
One of the biggest mistakes that many people who have scheduled a workout program into their week make, is allowing it to be bumped off of their schedule too easily.
Although things will occasionally come up that will cause you to have to reschedule the workout you had planned, you must be vigilant in making sure that only the most important emergencies are allowed to temporarily take you off of your plan. And you need to reschedule that missed workout.
In the event that one of those important emergencies does happen and you can’t make it to your workout, reschedule with yourself to do a make-up workout on the next possible day that you are available to do so. If you can’t fit it in during the week, then make a commitment and schedule it in for Saturday or Sunday morning. This way you will have the rest of the day to do what you had already planned.
Enroll others in your goals
Let the important people in your life know what you are up to. Your spouse, parents, children, co-workers, and close friends will often pitch in and help you to meet your fitness or weight loss commitment to yourself. All you have to do is make them aware and ask for their support.
Leverage these relationships to delegate some of your normal responsibilities or even allow you to shift appointments that you have with them as you restructure your schedule for your workout. If any of them are into exercise or trying to lose weight themselves, don’t hesitate to form a buddy system with them as you move forward with your program.
Don’t beat yourself up
No matter who you are, there will be times in your workout program that you just aren’t able to keep it up as you would like due to outside demands. Don’t be too tough on yourself when that happens.
Remember that it is what you do consistently over a long period of time, not what you do in spurts, that truly counts. Just make sure that you get back on the horse full force as soon as you can and continue to press forward, doing your best to avoid slacking off again.
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