Too Busy to Exercise

lisatwin1b wrote: »

I feel the same way! I get up at 7 am, cool breakfast and get the kids off to school. My husband the only one who demand breakfast. I try to tidy up and walk the dig before I leave for work at 8:45. Then I'm home at 5:30/6 and cook dinner, clean up, pay bills, and try to squeeze in one more walk with the dog and get to need by 10pm. What I need to do is make my family help, but that usually takes more time than doing it myself.

What does waking up at 7am feel like?

• Adopt a weekend warrior attitude.
• Walk or ride a bike wherever you need to go.
• Exercise on your lunch break
• Exercise with your partner when you're at home
• Diminish the house work to "maintenance" mode (ie. no projects)
• Streamline your life in other was:
• - buy multiple shirts/pants of the same type that you like to wear daily, it eliminates the choice or need to match things
• - eliminate TV and as much non-productive screen time
• - avoid friends that are a time drain
• - make those group meetings "short and sweet", so you spend less time there
• Remember that diet is a big part of this, which is more about food choices you make than needing to find blocks of time

As you can see from the community response, plenty of people are in similar circumstances to yours and they've found ways to include exercise into their busy schedules, so there is no need for me to make further suggestions on that side of things.
However, if it's the case that you feel you need to exercise because the pounds are going on (or they are refusing to come off), then you're starting in the wrong place for the solution.
The first place to look, and something you are in control of no matter how busy you are in life, is how much you eat and drink.
Simple basic fact, if the pounds are going on or won't come off, it's because you are consuming too much, and you need to start fixing that before worrying too much about how much exercise you can squeeze into your day.
Most people's workouts actually amount to just a few hundred calories burned, which whilst in itself is great, it's not much compared to the many many hundreds of calories you may be consuming in poor food and drink choices.
I'm not saying you view it like this, but the mentality of "If only I could find the time to exercise then I'd be able to lose some weight" is widely believed but completely wrong.
There are just two things to keep at the front of your mind when it comes to successful weight-loss:
1. Consume less calories daily than you burn.
2. Eat less and move more.
Good luck !

If you're going for your MBA I'm sure you've studied the Pareto Principle by now - sit down and identify the 20% that matters and intentionally neglect the other 80%.

My wife gets up at 3:45 am to run/TRX every morning and works from 6 am- 3:30 pm. Picks up our three kids from daycare at 4:30 pm and manages homework and the early evening schedule. I get up at 5 am and do calisthenics/aerobic workout, wake up the kids at 6:30, do light calisthenics with them and get them ready and off to school/daycare at 7:30, work 9 am- 5 pm. Hit the gym on the way home for weight training, then we all get together and do something - walk around the neighborhood, ride bikes, etc.

At work we eat lunch at our desks typically and use this hour break to work out. Most of my 1 to 1 meetings are walking meetings or something active. I purchased Varidesks for my team. Every now and then we do pushups, squats, etc in the office. You just make time.

From personal experience - I used to sacrifice health/family for work and saw no results. Extra work was rarely appreciated and rarely rewarded. Since I focused on that critical 20% my outlook and that of my peers has increased in a positive regard immensely.

Doing household works for me is already an exercise. Just tune up the radio and move with it. Its also a good way of exercising though. Its not really a matter of solely exercise that you will give up anything for the sake of exercise. You can do multitasking if you want and the act of moving around, walking on the patio, cleaning the house is already a good cardio exercise. I think its enough already and if you have time walking in or out of your office, then do it. Just keep dehydrated. Its also important to watch your diet and prepare a healthy snack so that you will not force to buy unhealthy snacks at your office/school.