With July 4th behind us, are you finding yourself in the midst of a mid-summer slump? Are you so busy with getting the kids back and forth to their activities, taking care of the house, work and waiting eagerly for the school year that you find yourself wondering how the heck you managed to fit in a workout previously?
I feel your pain. I am so used to doing my daily workouts that when I have to skip a day or find circumstances robbing me of my valuable work out time that I am looking my mid-summer slump in the eye and getting really irritated with it. After all, what is the point of a workout routine if you can’t get to it each and every day?
Reasons and Excuses
Your reasons and excuses are likely as valid as my own – but the problem is when you let too many days accrue where you miss your workout or skip it – you are building up a debt that you can’t overcome without reprioritizing your time and goals. So – let’s start by eliminating the following phrase from our repertoire of excuses:
I’m waiting for the right time to get back to the workout I was doing. I’m waiting for the right time to get started. I’m waiting for the right time …
There is no such thing as the right time. When we wait for the right time, we’ll still be waiting twenty years from now. The point of the matter is that while there are numerous things we can’t control that happen daily – the weather for example – how we respond to it – we can control it. If you need to jumpstart your day or fitness plan – the time to do it is now.
The Time Is Now
The solution is actually simple – just become more active. No, don’t roll your eyes. The first time I heard that phrase, I rolled my own and stared at the person telling me this as if they’d sprouted a second head. Seriously, how much more active can I be? I’m on the run constantly. I juggle a dozen different writing jobs, including a writing contract for a local company that requires as much as eight hours of my day.
I have an active five year old and she doesn’t take being ignored well. Her camps are limited in the amount of time she is at them and I am not going to put her in a day care for 11 hours a day. I can’t even imagine what that would be like for me. In the meanwhile, there’s the normal daily needs of running the house that need to be tackled from laundry to cooking to cleaning to taking care – yeah – you get the picture and yes, it makes my head hurt.
But the point is – because we know this all exists – becoming more active can be done in conjunction with the daily routine. For example, when my daughter is home with me during the day, I take a break every other hour of work in order to do things with her. A great way to handle incorporating more activity is to take a 20 minute walk with her during one of those breaks or let her take her bike out while I walk with her.
Relax More
Stimulating your workout isn’t just about being more active, it’s about relaxing more too. Don’t work right up until the moment you crash. Don’t cram work into every moment that when you go to sleep, you pass out only long enough to recharge slightly before getting back up and starting the hamster wheel all over again. You need down time. Your family needs down time too.
Trust me – you’ll be a lot more interested in a workout after a solid night’s sleep and a lot less resentful of spending time on a workout when you have so much else to do. I know – I’ve been through it and I’m wrestling through it right now. Speaking of which, I’m due for my break and I promised the midget we’d go for a walk before we dove into the household chores. I’ll check back in here later. We’re going to talk more about Mother and Child fitness as well as how to stimulate your workouts and weight loss plans and incorporating some mind-body techniques this week. Have a great morning!
How do you stimulate your workout?