Why Fitting Exercise Into a Busy Schedule is Important

Fitting exercise into a busy schedule is essential because staying active is crucial for both physical and mental health. Exercise helps improve energy levels, reduce stress, and improve cognitive function, which is essential for productivity. Moreover, it helps to maintain a healthy weight and keep your body and its systems working properly, which is key for preventing chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. In a nutshell, instead of thinking, “I don’t have time to fit exercise into my busy schedule,” we should be thinking, “I don’t have time NOT to fit exercise into my schedule.”

Common Barriers to Exercise for Busy People

As busy people, we often neglect our physical health because we put other responsibilities first. In many cases, we assume that we’ll just fit exercise in, but then find that’s easier said than done. This perceived lack of time is one of the most common barriers to regular exercise.

Others include fatigue at the end of a busy day and often at the beginning of it. If we didn’t get enough sleep the night before, it can be extremely difficult to muster the energy needed to do a workout. Another barrier that I often hear about is a lack of motivation. It’s simply easier to put other things first if we don’t have goals or outcomes that we’re working toward, or if we don’t have someone holding us accountable.

Tips for Fitting Exercise Into a Busy Schedule

To help address these actual or perceived barriers to fitting exercise into a busy schedule, I’m bringing out 13 of my favorite tips for helping turn my clients’ health around. Feel free to file them away to pull out if one strategy isn’t working and you need something else.

Exercise first thing in the morning

You can start to work in some movement before you even get out of bed. Tightening and releasing your quads, flexing and pointing your feet, and doing a few circles with your ankles can help ease the stiffness that many of us feel as we take the first few steps of the day.

Once you are out of bed, I highly recommend getting your main exercise session in first thing. This makes sure that no matter what else happens with your day, you’ve already it’s already done. You can also work exercise into your routine for getting ready for the day. Some examples include dropping down and doing some push-ups or core exercises while you’re waiting for the shower to warm up as well as doing squats while you’re brushing your teeth.

Schedule exercise into your day

Put it into your calendar or planner and treat your time to exercise just like any other appointment that you wouldn’t miss.

Break up your workout

Splitting movement into 5-10-minute chunks throughout the day is a great way to get in exercise. To remind you, set an alarm on your phone, watch, or movement tracker for 10-minute breaks throughout the day. Then, this is key, don’t ignore it when it goes off!

Exercise during your lunch break

This can work very well for people who get a set amount of time for lunch. Just keep exercise clothes and shoes in your car or desk so you don’t have to worry about trying to remember them every day.

Move during your kids’ activities

Unless your child is actually playing in a game or otherwise performing, there are very few reasons why you need to sit and watch an entire practice. They need their space, and you need your time to take care of yourself.

Look for ways to work movement in at work

This can be taking the stairs instead of the elevator; if walking to work isn’t an option, park 10-15 minutes away and walk the rest of the way; exercise, stretch, or at least pace around your office during meetings or calls; and use a standing desk or treadmill desk. (Full disclosure: when I really have to concentrate, standing while working doesn’t click for me, but when I’m doing tasks that don’t take a lot of thought, it’s a welcome break from sitting.)

Dance while fixing dinner

That’s right – crank the music up and move while you’re chopping, stirring, or waiting for something in the oven!

Make exercise part of the time that you spend with your significant other or friends

This way you don’t have to make a choice between doing something healthy for yourself and being with those that you love.

Use a free online workout

These can be done at your own pace and split into smaller, separate sessions if needed.

Do workouts that combine cardio and strength training

If you can’t get in both a cardio session and strength training on a regular basis, having full-body workouts that include both is an effective option that makes efficient use of your time.

Exercise while watching TV in the evening

While I am a big advocate of allowing your body and brain time to wind down at the end of the day, before you totally veg out, get in some movement while getting caught up on your favorite show.

Wear a tracker

Let’s face it, most of us tend to overestimate the amount of movement that we get in throughout the day if we’re not doing a focused exercise session. Wearing a tracker gives you an accurate accounting and often motivates you to reach your exercise goals.

Play with your kids or Grandkids

While children do need to have time when they play by themselves or with other friends if they are at the stage where you need to be close by to keep an eye on them most of the time, working in a vigorous game of tag will create memories and help to keep you healthy.

Bottom Line on Fitting Exercise Into a Busy Schedule

As we’ve seen here, fitting exercise into a busy schedule is possible, it just has to be a priority. Once you’ve determined it is, you can use these strategies to find efficient ways to work movement into your daily routine.

If working regular exercise into your busy schedule is a challenge, I’d love to talk with you about how we can work together to do that. While the tips that I’ve given here are tried and true strategies, everyone’s situation is different, and you may need a more individualized approach. If this is something that you’re interested in exploring, feel free to reach out to me at info@peppermint-tea.com.

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I am a firm believer in the power of a morning routine. How we start the day has a huge impact on how the rest of the day will go. If we keep hitting the snooze button, wake up at the last possible second, rush to get dressed and get the kids off to school, skip breakfast, gulp down a cup of coffee and barely get to work on time, the chances that we’re going to be our best for the day are slim. On the other hand, waking up early enough to start the day in an intentional way stands a much better chance of setting us up for success as well as boosting our overall health and wellness. In this article, I’m looking at what a morning routine is, why it’s important and some of my tried-and-true morning routine ideas for getting the day started off right. 

What is a Morning Routine?

By definition, a routine is regularly doing things in a fixed order, usually at a particular time. A morning routine is any type of routine that happens as you’re starting your day – whether that day begins at 8am or 11pm for shift workers. According to Northwestern Medicine, “routines offer a way to promote health and wellness through structure and organization.” While we don’t want to have every minute of our day scheduled, it is beneficial to have some structure, otherwise it’s easy to be unorganized, distracted and not accomplish the things that we want to. 

While there can be many different views on what a morning routine is, I look at it as what I do before my workday starts. It is what helps to get me in the right place physically and mentally for the day ahead. Depending on your stage in life and whether you work from home or have a commute, a morning routine can take 30 minutes or two hours. It’s whatever works best for you. Some days, you may have to adjust it a bit, but for the most part, your morning routine is how you regularly start the day. 

Morning Routine Ideas

If you listen to interviews with some of the world’s most successful people, you’ll find that most rely on a morning routine of some type. Even before I learned this, it was simply something that came naturally to me. I knew that I felt better when I started my day in a more structured way and that I felt worse when I didn’t. It wasn’t too hard to figure out which I preferred. Here are some morning routine ideas that I can highly recommend. 

Set your alarm

If you have to be somewhere at a set time, get kids off to school or have any other morning obligations, you’re probably going to need to set an alarm in order to get your morning routine in. This may mean moving your bedtime forward a bit so that you get the sleep you need, but I can promise that this habit will be worth it. After you’ve conditioned your body to your new routine, setting an alarm may not even be necessary. 

Write in a gratitude journal

This doesn’t have to take long. Just list 5-10 things, people or experiences that you’re grateful for. An article in Greater Good Magazine cites gratitude expert Robert Emmons as saying that gratitude affirms “that there are good things in the world, gifts and benefits we’ve received.” This can be powerful if we’re struggling to see past our own problems or are feeling down or stressed. 

Write in a free writing journal or do a brain dump

A free writing journal gives us a chance to reflect on our experiences or anything that we’re feeling. A brain dump offers the opportunity to clear mental space by getting all the thoughts running through our mind onto a piece of paper. Both exercises help to acknowledge and process extraneous thoughts and feelings that may be causing us anxiety or taking up mental energy. 

Do some kind of exercise or movement

While at least 150 minutes a week is what the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommends, any amount is going to give you some health benefits. Even if you usually get your main exercise in during the afternoon, stretching or moving your body in some way in the morning will help to wake you up and get your body going after a night of sleeping. 

Read

If finding time to read is tough, carving out a few minutes in the morning can be a relaxing way to ease into the day. 

Get dressed for the day

While this may be a bit obvious, I include it as part of a morning routine because that makes it an intentional activity that I have to set aside time to do as part of my preparation for the day. If I don’t look at it in that way, I rush through the process, already feeling frazzled and as if I should be doing something else.

Fix breakfast

If you don’t take the time to fix breakfast for yourself because you simply don’t need it, then skip this. If you don’t fix breakfast for yourself because you don’t think you have time, then making it part of your morning routine will do wonders for your health and your pocketbook. Even if you don’t have time to eat it before you leave the house, take something with you to eat on the way or when you arrive at work.

Update your budget

What?? You might ask if you haven’t read my post on Creating a Budget for a Healthier You. As I mention there, taking 5 minutes to update your budget (what used to be known as balancing your checkbook) every day makes it so that it’s not an overwhelming task at one time. It also helps to guide your decisions throughout the day. 

Read or watch local news

Keeping on top of what’s happening in your local community is just as important as keeping up with national and international news. With all of the online resources available these days, it’s fairly easy to stay on top of national news. Local news, on the other hand, is easy to lose sight of. Setting aside a few minutes each morning to do this will keep you on top of what is happening in your own backyard.

Reattach to work

I love this one! If we’re successfully detaching from work at the end of the day, it only stands to reason that reattaching at the beginning of the day would make sense. Researchers found that reattaching, or rebuilding a mental connection to work, is important for staying engaged and focused during the day. 

This article in Greater Good Magazine suggests that in preparation for your workday, you ask yourself the following questions.

1. Why does the work I do matter to me? How does my work impact the lives of others?
2. Who are the people—both at work and in my personal life—who support me and my professional success?
3. What would I like to focus on today?

While you won’t be able to fit all of the above ideas into your morning routine, I recommend picking 2-4 that resonate with you and see how they work. 

The Morning Routine That Has Served Me Best

Depending on what phase of life you’re in, you’ll probably need to switch up your morning routine to accommodate your other obligations. You may also need to adjust the time that you wake up. When my boys were younger, having a little quiet time to myself was so important to me that I woke up at 5am just to fit it in. While that was definitely early, it would have been much harder on me not to fit it in at all. Now that I don’t have to do everything for my one son still at home, I get to sleep until 5:45am or 6am. 

Here’s a look at the most recent version of my morning routine that has served me best. 

5:45am = wake-up and get dressed in workout clothes

6 – 6:15am = meditation

6:15 – 6:30am = journaling

6:30 – 7:15am = exercise/stretching and listen to local and national news

7:15 – 7:45am = get dressed/fix breakfast

7:45 – 8am = eat breakfast, update budget, reattach for work

8am = start work

** This has been my best pandemic routine. In “normal” times, I would allow for the five-minute drive to and from the gym.

Clearly, life happens. If I need to go for a stretch of letting myself sleep a little later, I do. But if I let myself go for long periods of time without making room for my morning routine, I definitely start feeling off and know that I need to get back on track.

Bottom Line on Morning Routines

The point in all of this has been to give you plenty of morning routine ideas to choose from that might work for you. The key is being realistic about the kind of time that you have or are willing to make in the mornings to fit it in. Even if you can only sit quietly and then exercise for a few minutes, those are things that will help you start the day feeling better than if you had slept late and rushed out the door.

Do you have a morning routine? If so, let us know in the comments what it is so that we can all get ideas.

The post Morning Routine Ideas for Getting the Day Started Right appeared first on Peppermint Tea.

Since I have a weightlifting son who puts a lot of effort into timing his eating around his workouts, I started wondering whether I should be paying more attention to what I eat and when I eat it in conjunction with my workouts. Afterall, I, like most people, want to make sure that if I’m putting in that much effort, I’m getting the most out of it. To get the answers I was looking for, I turned to Dani Singer, CEO and Director of Fit2Go Personal Training in Baltimore, Maryland. In this Q&A, Dani fills us in on all of the do’s and some of the don’ts of eating for exercise and what we should be eating before and after working out.

Peppermint Tea & Me: We know that elite athletes and weightlifters are cognizant of what they eat when in order to optimize their workouts or training, but do regular people need to do the same when we’re exercising if the goal is not necessarily weight loss but to become or stay healthy?

Dani Singer: A big part of that comes down to the individual. If you’re running, it’s going to come down to how well you can perform during the run, how well you can improve your cardiovascular efficiency and what makes you feel good after. Whatever exercise you’re doing, it’s about how you can perfect your personal performance. If eating a certain way before a run or workout makes you perform worse, then don’t do it. If it makes you feel better, do it.

PT&M: Is there a certain timeframe in which we should eat before we exercise?

DS: What, for most people, works really well is to eat at least 30 minutes if not 60 minutes before their run or when they exercise. That’s where to start. Some people will be great 30 minutes before, and some people will eat 30 minutes before and they’ll be like, ‘Oh my God no, I get so nauseous, I have to do 60 minutes before.’ So, start with that kind of recommendation of you want to do it 30 to 60 minutes before and see what works for you.

PT&M: What should be eaten before we exercise?

DS: What you want usually is some kind of quick digesting carb around your workouts, which is different than what you usually want to have. Most of the time you want to have slow digesting carbs. You want to have something like whole wheat, brown rice, and something with whole grain, whole fiber. But when you’re doing your workout, that’s when you want the simple, quickly digesting carbs because you want them to be easily converted into fuel, as you’re running, weightlifting, or whatever you’re doing.

You don’t want to have a huge meal, because you just don’t want to have so much that you feel too full and it’s slowing you down, and you don’t want to have too little that you’re feeling hungry and that you are not able to perform as well. Generally, we recommend for clients to do something like a smoothie. Where it will be a fruit smoothie, so the fruit is simple, there’s simple, quick digesting carbs, and we’ll have some Greek yogurt or some protein powder or something in there. If you have both the protein and the quick digesting carbs, that’s really what you need for your workout. One serving of simple carbs, one serving of protein, and then for most people, they’re good to go.

PT&M: How does our nutrition impact what we get out of our exercise?

DS: Everything comes down to conversion of energy. You’re constantly expending energy by breathing, by just being alive. And then when you are exercising, you’re intentionally expending more energy. So, the energy has to come from somewhere. The primary sources of energy our body uses are glucose or fat. Glucose is sugar. All carbs are composed of sugar, and glucose is your body’s preferred source of energy. It’s the best. It can be converted to energy the most readily and the most effectively for your body. Whether it’s an apple, whether it’s brown rice, or whether it’s white rice, all carbs are just chains of simple sugars. So, it’s a question of how long those chains are. Whole grains will be longer chains. Fruit will be smaller chains. The idea is that the smaller chains are more easily broken down. So, if you’re having fruit, it can be quickly broken down and then your body can use it. If you’re having something with whole grain, your body is going to take a long time to break that down before it can actually utilize it. That’s why generally if you’re eating those quick digesting carbs, it’s just spiking your insulin. You usually don’t want that, but you do want that readily available around your workout.

PT&M: What should we eat after we exercise?

DS: If you’re just having a banana and a Greek yogurt before your workout, you’re probably still going to be hungry afterward. Then it might be a good time to have breakfast. You might have some eggs and some oatmeal or something like that, but I wouldn’t say that you necessarily need to have a meal at a certain time after.

PT&M: I think most people have heard the saying “You have 30 minutes to recover” after you exercise, but what does that really mean?

DS:  There’s the idea of the anabolic window, which is somewhere between 30 to 90 minutes post workout. Anabolic means just building up. In fitness, we’re talking about building up muscle. When you’re doing your workout, you’re breaking down your muscle fibers and then you have that window where it can most readily utilize nutrition to repair and to build back stronger muscles. The initial research on the anabolic window was done probably 10 years ago at least. Since then, more research has shown that it’s really like 24 hours after your workout that you have that anabolic window. There may be some extra benefit to doing it within 30 to 90 minutes, but the only ones really pushing that strongly are the protein powder companies.

PT&M: If someone is trying to lose weight, eating just after exercising may seem counterintuitive. Do the same rules apply in those cases?

DS: One thing I would caution against is when people are thinking about losing weight, is not to think, ‘Okay I just burned all these calories, so let me not eat now, or I’m going to eat later.’ Because if you’re holding back from eating, specifically if you are hungry and you’re holding back, not only is it not healthy, but you’re going to end up, for most people, they’ll end up just eating even more later. What matters with weight loss is the total calories throughout the day. So, don’t stress about having to put them around your workout, other than how it affects your workout and your performance.

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We’ve all gotten sidetracked at one time or another when it comes to healthy eating and exercise. Life happens, we get bored or we might lose sight of why we’re doing what we’re doing in the first place. It’s not the end of the world. The most important thing is recognizing what’s going on and getting back on track. It’s not the easiest thing to do, but it’s probably easier than you might think – especially if you use these 10 steps for restoring your health and wellness to guide you along the way.

1. Acknowledge that you’ve gotten off track. As with anything, this is the critical first step – acknowledging that we’re not happy with the way things are going or that we want them to improve. It’s hard to make any changes if we don’t do this first. This isn’t meant to judge or to be hard on ourselves. It’s just looking at the situation in a very matter-of-fact way and recognizing that we want something to be different.
2. Track macros and other nutrients if possible. I am not a proponent of this on a regular basis because it’s too easy to get obsessed with it, but it is a beneficial exercise to do for a week or so if we feel like we’ve gotten off track from where we want to be. Unless weight loss is your goal, that’s not how this is meant to be used. This is primarily to let us see how many carbs and how much sugar we’re really taking in every day. That’s not to say that either of these are necessarily bad, but if they are the wrong types of each, they could be among the culprits for us not feeling our best. Complex carbs and natural sugar from whole fruits and vegetables are usually okay. But if we’ve gotten off track, it may be that we’re eating too many processed foods which tend to be loaded with simple carbs and added sugar. While eating those types of food every now and then is okay, we have to be careful that “every now and then” doesn’t become every day. Tracking what we’re eating and figuring out what that really meant for our numbers that day is an eye-opening way to recognize where we may be getting off track. Keeping up with other nutrients is all the better. If we can make a connection between something we might have been low in for the day or for a few days in a row and how we were feeling those days, it can be very helpful in recognizing where corrections need to be made.
3. Accept responsibility. When we get off track, it’s very easy to blame outside circumstances and to convince ourselves that we really didn’t have control over the situation. Life does happen, but we need to recognize that’s it’s still our choice as to how we handle different situations. Again, this doesn’t mean that we should be beating ourselves up, but it does mean that we should recognize where we’ve made our choices and what the consequences of those choices were. It’s truly an empowering truth. We are the only ones responsible for our health and wellbeing. While our life circumstances may change from month to month or even day to day, and we do have to be flexible, it’s still our choice as to whether we find a way to do the things that keep us healthy or not.
4. Think about how you’re currently feeling and how you felt when you were feeling good or at least better. This exercise is most effective if the responses can be written down. That way we can easily compare the two and recognize how we want to be feeling and whether that’s different than how we’re currently feeling.
5. List your current challenges to eating healthy or exercising. The more specific we can get with this, the better. Don’t just say, “I don’t have enough time right now.” If we had time at one point, we can find it again. If it’s that “The kids are out of school for the summer, and our schedule is very unpredictable,” then say that. Or, if it’s that you’re planning certain meals at the beginning of the week and then don’t find them very appealing when it comes time to make them, admit that. Or, “I’m in a food rut, and it’s all just boring right now.” Say that. Be honest. No one is judging us on our answers, but the more specific we can be on what our current roadblocks are, the more specific the solutions can be.
6. Set new goals – short-term and long-term. We have to start where we are with this, not where we were previously. If it’s that cooking meals at home has become more difficult, we can’t rely on the fact that we were cooking at home every night at one point. If that’s no longer happening for whatever reason, it’s no longer happening. While it’s critical that we set short-term goals to get us where we want to be, it’s also important to set long-term ones as well. Sometimes we get off track because we lose sight of the big picture of what we want for ourselves in the first place, and sometimes this happens because the long-term goals we once set no longer fit. That’s fine. Re-evaluate and set new ones.
7. Get specific with possible solutions. Once we know what our current challenges and new goals are, we can list possible specific solutions. The more specific we can be with this, the better. If cooking meals at home again is a goal, then get back to a reasonable starting point of saying that three to four meals for the first week is what we’re shooting for. Once we’re back in the habit, it will become more natural again. If getting exercise in has become difficult, aim for two to three days for the first week.
8. Recruit a partner or partners to help you. This is huge because accountability and support can make the difference between whether we’re able to get back on track or not. The most important thing is that it’s someone we feel okay being completely honest with and who won’t judge us because we were doing great and have now gotten sidetracked. This can be one person or many people – whatever works best. If putting it all out there on social media and asking for help and support that way feels comfortable, then by all means, go for it. The main thing is that a support network is in place.
9. Adopt a positive attitude about health and wellness goals. If it’s not something that excites us or makes us feel good, it’s not going to work – again. Drudgery is not what we’re going for here, and if that’s how we’re feeling about it, then that’s probably why we got sidetracked in the first place. Really recognizing why we’re doing what we’re doing and the impact it’s going to have on our overall wellbeing can help get us back in the right frame of mind.
10. Give yourself some grace. This is probably one of the most important steps we can take when getting back on track. We are not perfect. No one is. But that doesn’t mean we don’t keep trying. Beating ourselves up because we didn’t get exercise in one day or that we had two days of eating foods that we knew weren’t good for us isn’t going to help anything. We have to simply accept it, think about it enough to figure out why we made the choices we did and work to make choices we do feel good about the next day.

Getting sidetracked doesn’t mean we’re failing, and it doesn’t mean we can’t still accomplish our health goals. Sometimes getting sidetracked shows us where tweaks need to be made in what we’re working for in the first place, and sometimes getting off course just happens. It’s all okay. The most important thing is that we learn from it and move on toward our best life possible.

Lean on Your Community

If you need help or support in getting back on track, leave a comment below, head over to the Peppermint Tea & Me Facebook page or to keep it more private, feel free to email me at Robyn@robynmooring.com.

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