Debunking the Time Excuse: by Leif Nilsen
Welcome to our very first guest blog! Each Sunday I will be featuring an article written by one of my closely respected colleagues. There is so much to learn, do and say when it comes to fitness I couldn’t possibly come close to covering it all. Now you’ll be able to learn a wide variety of information; and meet knew trainers to learn from as well. Enjoy!
Reasons people don’t exercise, and how to debunk them:
Time: you’ve got family, friends, work, etc that are are seemingly bigger obligations than exercising. But what about the time that is spent watching tv, on social media, online shopping, even just laying down in your bed doing nothing! I have a challenge for those of you thinking that time is a constraint to your ability to exercise:
Track your time throughout the day. Every minute. From the time you wake up to the time that you go to bed. (And no I don’t mean getting out of bed and getting in bed because I know you get up to that snooze button and I know you get in bed with that phone in hand or tv on) how much time is spent doing the important and non important stuff. How much time could you save by getting rid of some of the time on the less important things during your day? Track it, and see how much time you could be spending exercising throughout the week.
How are you spending your weekends? Partying or sitting down and watching football for endless hours? Hey, I love my fair of football and probably watch too much of it myself. But I make sure that football is not my first priority on the weekends; that I get my exercise done and done well so that I feel like I earned those hours on the couch watching the big game. Maybe not a football fan? How much time is spent fussing around the house looking for seemingly unimportant tasks to do to fill your time. Sound like you? I have a challenge because house work is important, and I love a clean looking place, but set time limits for it. Write a to do list and include times that each task will take so that once it’s done it’s done, and you’ve freed up some extra weekend time!
Check your phone battery usage. Huh? What’s that? (For iPhone users and I’m assuming other phones have this as well) Settings➡️battery ➡️ boom. There it is. See how much percentage of your phone battery is spent on safari, Instagram, Amazon etc. Deeper than that, if you tap on the outline of the clock and you can see how many minutes per day and per week you spend on each app on your phone. Surprise you? It did for me too. But this was such an eye opener for me to show myself how much extra time I can have for myself if I just let the phone down and look up; and accomplish some extra of whatever is needed. And for you that may be exercise.
Have you found an extra 10, 20, 30 or more minutes now during your daily life that you can start getting some exercising in? Whether it starts at a 10 minute walk or run, doing some push ups and sit ups, whatever it is, find the time for it. Stop watching those 10 minute cat videos (I know, we’ve all done it) and start prioritizing the things that really matter in your life to better your life.
Article by: Leif Nilsen
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