20 Simple Ways to Help You Find Time to Exercise
We live in a busy world. It’s so difficult to find time to exercise. Whether you’re a mom or dad, businessman, professional or a student, there are just not enough hours in a day to get everything done. How to find time to work out when you have so many things to do? Maintain the household. Manage the kids. Advance your career or business. Sometimes, the last thing on your mind is your health and fitness. But that shouldn’t be the case. You need to carve time for the important things in life. Your fitness and well-being are one of the most important aspects of your life.
So, if you’re struggling to incorporate exercise into your life, we offer you 20 easy ways to finally win this battle and become more physically active.
1. Prioritize It Mentally
Sometimes, finding time to exercise is not about time management but about self-management. We find time to binge on Netflix, yet find it hard to schedule even a thirty-minute workout. When you prioritize your workout, it won’t be something that gets done when you have “extra” time left, it will be something that NEEDS to be done before your day ends.
2. Set Some Goals
We all have our reasons for getting fit and each one of us has a specific set of fitness-related goals: some to lose weight, some to maintain their body figure, and some to improve health such as preventing the occurrence of diabetes.
Everyone has a big WHY. When you figure that out, you will have the daily fitness motivation that you need to keep on doing it, especially on the days when you feel “blah”. Write down your fitness goals and post them somewhere you see them every day so you’ll have that daily reminder of your big why.
You can write them down in your planner, make them your phone's wallpaper or screensaver, attach them to your fridge with a magnet, or come up with something entirely new. Just make sure to have your goals in sight as often as possible.
3. Schedule It Ahead of Time
By blocking a specific time to work out in your calendar, you are greatly increasing your chances to find some time for physical exercise. You can again write it down on your planner or set an alarm on your phone. You can then plan your day AROUND your schedule so you can focus on the tasks that you MEANT to do that day and decline less important or unplanned events or invitations.
4. Incorporate It Into Your Routine
Setting a daily schedule for your workout, a specific time of the day, or a specific place in the house (if you’re not going to the gym), will help you to “run on auto-pilot” eventually. Over time, getting your workout done will become a daily fitness habit, it’s so naturally embedded in your routine, that if you don’t do it, you will feel something amiss, instead of the other way around.
5. Be Flexible
It doesn’t have to be in the gym, although it’s good to have a trainer to guide you and to have an accountability partner in your fitness journey. You can exercise almost anywhere, even in the office.
If you’re a mom with young kids , your time to exercise doesn’t have to be me-time. You can work out even with little kids around. It’s also a great way to bond with them.
If you work in an office, you can sneak in some physical exercise even while sitting at your desk, such as contracting your abs muscles and holding it for 30 seconds, for a few sets.
6. Change Your Diet
If you need to lose weight, you probably have to do more than just exercise, which means changing your diet. Even if you want to become more active just for the sake of staying fit and healthy, your diet is important. After all, we all know by now that abs are made in the kitchen.
That’s why you should take some time to calculate the size of your meal portions and get a product like INEVIFIT Kitchen Scale to help you weigh your meals on a daily basis. This simple and convenient scale will easily blend into any kitchen and help you meet your fitness goals much faster than expected.
7. Find an Accountability Partner
He or she is someone who will help you focus on the goals you want to accomplish, identify the actions that must be taken to successfully achieve these goals, and most importantly, go through the journey with you while you work to reach your goals. Depending on your fitness level, your fitness trainer, your spouse or a close neighbor can be an accountability partner. Just having a friend who’ll jog with you can motivate you during the days when you feel like you’d rather sleep in.
8. Look for Opportunities to Run or Walk
If you’re a mom, you might want to walk with your child to and from school or when you do the day’s errands. If you’re a corporate professional, you can work or run (or even bike) your daily commute. Just keep some fresh clothes handy.
Walking up a flight of stairs instead of using the elevator is another way to be physically active without taking up so much of your time. Running and walking outdoors not only burns those calories, but it also allows you to soak in the sun’s vitamin D. You can also join fun runs to help raise funds for your chosen advocacy. That way, you’re not only doing it for your benefit, you’re also doing it for a greater cause — something that could motivate you to get up and running.
9. Buy Some Nice Equipment
Although you don’t really need fancy sneakers to start running, buying them can make you feel more motivated to start. If you’re not motivated enough to become physically active, new leggings, a sweatshirt, or even a cute water bottle can do wonders for your attitude toward exercising. Get yourself one set of clothes for the type of exercise you’re planning on incorporating into your life and see how it affects your desire to get the workout done.
10. Start Your Day With It
If you’re running a household, getting up a few minutes earlier than the rest of the family can give you a few minutes to do your workout before starting with your To-Dos for the day.
Starting your day with physical activity perks you up and boosts your energy, helping you to feel refreshed and full of vigor. Exercising early in the morning can help you feel more energized throughout the day. Also, working out in the morning may mean fewer distractions and increased chances that you’ll be able to stick to your schedule and eventually make it a habit.
11. Make It a Family Activity
A weekly bike ride around the park with the whole family may not only improve your health but also your relationship with them. By spending time with your kids and engaging them in various physical activities, you are not only promoting your health as well as theirs, but you are also creating wonderful memories that they’ll surely remember and instilling healthy habits that they’ll share with their future families.
12. Exercise While Watching TV
An article from the New York Daily News states that “United States adults are watching five hours and four minutes of television per day on average.” That’s a LOT of time that we can use to work out. When you run on a treadmill or ride a stationary bike while watching TV, you’ll get the physical exercise your body needs while barely noticing the minutes pass by. In other words, you’ll do the thing you enjoy and the thing that’s good for you at the same time without sacrificing one or the other.
13. Make Exercise Your Default Activity During Your Idle Moments
For a lot of adults, one of the default pastimes is browsing through social media. A 2019 infographic claims that people now spend an average of 2 hours and 23 minutes on social media per day. By recognizing your idle moments and making a conscious effort to spend less time browsing social media, you create more opportunities to work out and engage in physical activity.
14. Sign Up for a Fitness Class, Online Group or Free Online Fitness Membership
By investing in a fitness class or gym membership, you increase your chances of being able to work out regularly. There’s this saying that “You value more what you pay for.” When you know that you’re spending hard-earned money in a gym membership or fitness class, you’ll be more motivated to show up and keep at it because not doing so will cost you.
You might also want to join an online fitness support group where you can “meet” individuals who share your fitness journey. It feels much easier when you know people who share the same struggles and are going after the same goals.
Subscribing to a free online membership can also help you reach your fitness goals and motivate you to find time to exercise. Joining the INEVIFIT Community is a great option. It’s FREE and full of helpful information such as fitness motivational quotes, nutritious recipes, and workout tips.
15. Join a Fitness Team
Some people don't like going to the gym. Lifting weights or doing numerous crunches isn’t their thing, as they require an actual sport with a specific goal to make them move, such as throwing a ball through a hoop.
Joining the community basketball team or hockey team (or any sport that requires some degree of physical activity) can greatly motivate you to find time to exercise and make new connections as well.
16. Evaluate Your Day
If you don’t know how to find time to work out, it’s time to take a moment and pay attention to your daily activities. There are cases when, despite your best intentions, something unexpected comes up and you have to do that more urgent task, forfeiting your chance to spend time on fitness. When you take the time to evaluate your day, looking in detail at how you spent portions of your day, you will be in a better position to find ways on how to improve it tomorrow.
17. Incorporate Physical Activity Into Your Vacation
Including a walking daytour of a popular tourist destination or a leisurely hike through a national park on your vacation itinerary not only burns a lot of calories, but it also helps you to reconnect with nature and enjoy the time you spend exercising. Moreover, finding time to exercise on days when you have literally no other things to do shouldn’t be that hard, right?
18. Make It Fun
It’s more likely that you’ll exercise more often if you find it something that you enjoy as opposed to something that you have to endure. There is no one-size-fits-all solution and each individual may be inclined to a specific kind of physical exercise based on his or her level of fitness and inclination. Your significant other might be into Zumba fitness while you would rather sweat it out by doing kickboxing. When you make it fun, chances are you’ll do it more often and lose weight fast.
19. Record Your Progress
While your goals will give you the WHY, monitoring your progress will show you WHERE you are in your journey. However, there are different ways to measure your fitness progress, and monitoring your weight is only one of them.
You also have to measure body composition, BMI, body fat percentage and a lot of other body metrics. Fortunately, with smart technology, you can have accurate monitoring of your body metrics just like tracking weight: by stepping on a weight scale.
Not all smart body fat scales are created equal though. One smart body fat scale stands out from the rest. The INEVIFIT Smart Body Fat Scale measures EIGHT key fitness metrics, including body weight, body fat percentage, water, muscle mass, BMI, BMR, bone mass and even visceral fat and records them directly on your smartphone.
The INEVIFIT Smart Body Fat Scale syncs with your favorite health apps and services, including Fitbit, Apple Health and Google Fit. But what sets it apart is the 7-day, real USA customer support, and five-year manufacturer’s warranty.
20. Don’t Give Up
Adding a new habit to your life, especially a difficult one like exercising can be really hard sometimes. Usually, people sign up for a fitness class or purchase a gym membership and stick with it for a week or two. However, most give up the first time they miss their practice because they see that moment of weakness as a failure. Don’t make that mistake.
If a day comes when you can’t make it to the gym or simply don’t feel like training, skip the session without feeling guilty about it. Then, tomorrow morning, think about why you started exercising and get back to it. Remember, missing one session is not a big deal, but sliding back into old bad habits will eventually take a toll on you, so don’t let it happen because of a single lazy day.
Conclusion
When you take care of yourself by exercising, you will find that you’re able to give more to the people around you. As you exercise regularly, you increase your chances to control weight successfully and build self-esteem. You’ll notice an improved mood, as well as improved performance and productivity as you go about your daily tasks.
When you’re the best version of yourself, you’ll feel that there’s more of YOU that you can contribute to your work or business. Ideas flow more easily, you begin to improve your performance at work and you feel more mentally alert. Also, there’s more of YOU to give to your family — you’ll start to feel more patient, happier and more capable. So, now that you know how to find time to work out, it’s time to make it happen.
