Making Time to Exercise

Today’s topic is how to make time to work out. The quick and dirty tip is to make your workouts top priority. It’s scarier than it sounds.

Mark from Los Angeles writes in:

Do you have any suggestions for how to get in shape? It’s a time management issue. Work-life balance is a juggling act. Exercising has gone out the window. It’s almost a choice between sleeping or exercising.

Oh,  friend, I feel your pain. I too once would ooze into my chair when I sat down, content and fluffy, with an ever expanding waistline.  And why change? I grew rounder and rounder.  After all, isn’t a circle the most divine of all shapes? Eventually, whether seen from above, in front, behind, or the side, I would have the perfect shape. A beautiful unbroken circle.

Then I outgrew my suit. My zipper wouldn’t zip. Now I was faced with a choice: do I own up to my age and buy bigger polyester pants, with a waistline that comes up to my nipples? Or do I lose weight, tone up, and returned to the spectacular body of my geeky youth. Well, duh. I worship superficial appearances as much as the next person.

Off to the gym. And golly workouts are hard. I went once and still didn’t fit into my suit. This was not promising. I put on my Get-it-Done hat and came to a horrifying realization: you can’t streamline exercise.

You can’t delegate it. Since using momentum means less muscle effort, you can’t just go pump pump pump pump pump and double-time your way through. And then, to add insult to injury, you need recovery time between sets. So there’s no getting around it taking time.

Here’s what worked. Make the gym top priority. Really, top priority. It goes on your schedule before any other commitments, even above work, family, and sleep. Only for the gravest emergencies do you cancel. I even shortened vacations so they wouldn’t interfere with my routine.

If this is hard, imagine yourself as a perfect sphere. Then imagine yourself bulging with manly-man muscles (or manly-girl muscles). Take your choice. Am I shallow to emphasize the external? No, I’m efficient. I’ve been trained by society to judge a person’s worth by superficial beauty. Thirty-five years of therapy to appreciate my inner beauty, or a year in the gym grunting to get the superficial beauty? The choice makes itself clear. Besides, studies show beautiful people get paid more, promoted, smiled at, and aren’t kicked off game shows. And insurance companies still consider plastic surgery optional. Harumph!

Next, hire a trainer to design a workout regime for you. Choose one who won’t fall for your attempts to cheat. Mine is Tyler from the Real World and Gauntlet III. A man who will humiliate himself mud-wrestling in front of 150,000,000 people needs to take out his aggression somewhere. Why not by giving me the body of an Adonis?

Your trainer teaches you proper form and makes sure you’re building a body that burns calories. Self-designed workouts failed for me. With Tyler’s routines, I work less and get much better results. If you’re way rich, use a trainer every visit. Otherwise, have your trainer design a routine and tune you up every several weeks.  Or try my Quick and Dirty compatriot, the Get-Fit Guy (who might be even better than a personal trainer, especially if you lack the budget, since his podcasts are free).

And yeah, revise your diet. Stay away from white carbs: refined flour and sugar. If you must, find someone to create a bunch of recipes for you that are tasty and fit the dietary profile. Also, check out the book “I Can Make You Thin” by Paul McKenna. The most popular diet book in Britain, it’s also super-simple. No restrictions on what you can eat. The secret is using your body to gauge what, when, and how much to eat. There’s a link to the book in this episode’s transcript. And, of course, there’s my fellow Quick and Dirty Tips podcaster, the Nutrition Diva.

You can’t make more time, so you’ll have to stop doing something to find time for your workout. Do this for three weeks, just to give it a try. Make your workout #1 priority, three times a week or more. Get a trainer for a couple of sessions to design workouts, show you proper form, and check in every few weeks Then learn to listen to your body to choose which calories go in and when to stop.

It’s work, but it’s worth it. I was marshmallow girly-boy and now I’m manly-man. People are impressed. My extra testosterone makes the paint on the ceiling curl. Since I never shower after a workout, my friends say it’s my body odor, but they’re just jealous. Showers are optional. Muscles, my friend, are not.

Stay tuned for a future episode, where Tyler will give specific hints for how to insert more exercise into your daily life.

This is Stever Robbins. Send me questions by voicemail at 866-WRK-LESS or by email at getitdone@quickanddirtytips.com. Check out the other wonderful podcasts at QuickAndDirtyTips.com.  Conquer your e-mail with my audio program You Are Not Your Inbox: Overcoming E-Mail overload at YouAreNotYourInbox.com.

Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!

Man Biking image courtesy of Shutterstock