A few months ago when COVID-19 hit and we had to quarantine, having less time to do things really wasn’t a problem. Now that life is starting to pick up the pace a bit (people are getting back to work, businesses are slowly reopening) and summer is almost over, that flexibility we all once had might be fading away.
Some of you that are reading this may have used the past few months to focus on your fitness and overall wellbeing. I mean, you had A LOT of free time to do so. So what happens when that free time starts getting eaten back up? And for those of you who are reading this and you didn’t maximize your free time, how will you get back on track when time is limited? Do you think it will be easier?
Chances are, it probably won’t be BUT what I want to discuss in today’s daily blog are some strategies that can help you improve your fitness when you’re on a time budget!
I’ve been in the fitness industry for over 10 years and the biggest roadblock that I consistently hear from people is that they “don’t have enough time.” They don’t have enough time to put into losing the weight that they want to lose. They don’t have enough time to track their nutrition. They don’t have enough time to get their workout in. They don’t have enough time to drink more water.
I hate to be so candid but at the end of the day, not having enough TIME to do something is an excuse. No matter how you wrap it up, you always have some time BUT that time you have is dependent upon your priorities. If your fitness goals aren’t a major priority of yours, then success is going to come much harder. So before we get into these strategies, you first need to answer these questions:
1.) Are your fitness goals the most important thing to you?
2.) Are you willing to commit to making a change?
3.) Are you going to hold yourself accountable?
If the answers to these questions are YES (which I hope they are!) then let’s move onto these strategies that are proven to help you be successful not only in your fitness goals but for any goal you set.
1.) Change Your Language
The first strategy that I am going to give you is how you talk to yourself. We need to literally avoid saying things like “I can’t”, “I won’t” or “I have to do (insert activity)”. You won’t prioritize anything if you don’t believe you can do it and it won’t be as enjoyable.
Strategy: Change from “I can’t” to “I can”, “I won’t” to “I will” and “I have to do this” to “I get to do this”. It doesn’t matter how much or how little time you have if you talk yourself out of it!
2.) Remind yourself of your priorities
This gets into something called Emotional Reasoning. Emotional Reasoning is the habit of making decisions based on how we feel rather than what we value. When we use our emotions and feelings as evidence for what we should or shouldn’t do, we end up spending all our time running away from discomfort rather than toward the things we really value.
Example:
I’m not going to work out today, I just don’t feel it.
Strategy: Writing your goals and putting them up on the wall or somewhere that you can see it every day is one strategy. What I have found to work better is take what is most important to you (your fitness goal) and make it the background on your phone. Every day you wake up and look at your phone? The first thing you see every morning should remind you of why you are getting up and should remind you of why you need to make the time to prioritize fitness.
3.) Create Appointments you can’t cancel
When you have an appointment on your calendar (Doctor or Dentist as an example), you’re less inclined to cancel that appointment. You made a commitment. When we have to hold ourselves accountable to taking action, we have to do the same thing. You need to schedule that workout in your calendar and treat it like something you can’t break or cancel. When we make verbal or soft commitments to ourselves, we are less inclined to follow through.
Strategy: Map out your next week’s workout schedule over the weekend. Set the appointments in the calendar on your phone with multiple reminders. This will allow nothing to get scheduled over it (if you use a scheduling software) and you will have a higher success rate of completing them.
4.) Self-Accountability System
To piggyback on the previous point, when we make verbal commitments to ourselves that we are going to do something, we are less likely to follow through on them. We need something in writing to hold us accountable. That’s why people that take the time to write out their goals are more likely to be successful than the people who just keep their goals in their heads. Same principle here, if you struggle with self-accountability, you need to put it out there.
Strategy: Take a few minutes and write a Facebook post on your personal page outlining your goals and the commitments you are going to make. Let your whole social circle see it! Does this make you uncomfortable? Good, then you should do it! In a year from now, that post/memory will appear in your news feed. The next question is did you decide to follow through or not?
5.) Get up
Have you ever said to yourself “I can never get up early” or “I’m not a morning person”? At some point in your life, you probably said that. I said that when I was in college. I would go to bed around 11:30 pm and wake up at 6:00 am for a 7:00 am class. I can see why I said I wasn’t a morning person, I didn’t get enough sleep! Here’s thing, there are people who are more inclined to be a morning person vs. a night owl, I get it. But getting up early and getting the hardest part of your day over with is a decision. If you want to maximize your time AND your productivity, get up early, and get it done.
Strategy: Start on Mondays (first day of the week) and get your workout in first thing in the morning, before everyone else is up. Do that for 4 weeks. Then add on the 2nd day… and so on. Gradually get into the habit. Start the week off on the right foot. YOU CAN DO THIS!