The Diet Logs

Exerciseis necessary to a sustained weight loss and, more importantly, to sustained maintenance–for who wants to spend months dieting only to regain everything plus more, and having to do the whole thing again? Yes, it can be annoying. Yes, it takes time out of sometimes already busy lives. But the gist of it is that we don’t really have a choice here. We have to make it work no matter what, and no matter the methods. Much unfortunately, because I really wish there was more time in a day for exercise.

Lynn already mentioned, in a previous post, that when busy, we should still try to incorporate little bits of exercise here and there. It can be frustrating, I know; however, this can also allow us to gradually build up more into our lives. This said, it’s not especially convenient either for certain types of sports or workouts, so how do these need to be tackled?

One thing I’ve decided to do (and found out that it works) for myself was to stop relying on ‘desire’ to exercise. By this, I don’t mean that I absolutely hate exercise, that it’s a chore, and that therefore I never do it because I don’t have this ‘desire’; I mean that I had to stop with the “I’ll do it when I have time and feel like it later on today”, because the truth is, I never have time, and at the end of the day, I’m tired and don’t feel like doing much cardio. Nevertheless, I manage to drag my butt out to go to work or to classes, right? I never feel like going to work, but I do it all the same. So I applied the same principle to exercise. If I can do it for something I don’t like, sure I can do it for something that, all in all, IS more pleasant.

I started by inputting my precise schedule in Excel. Work hours, class hours, lunch hours, free hours. And then I picked free hours in this, and ‘booked’ them for one hour of weight-lifting or cardio.

And it worked.

I keep this new timetable pinned above my desk, and every morning, when I get up, I see these blocks of exercise, half a hour or one hour, right under my nose. I don’t have to worry about when I have the time to do it; this time is already booked up. It may seem like it sucks, but truly, it doesn’t. What are three or four more hours in an alreayd overpacked week? I don’t notice them any longer, even this way.

As the saying goes, “if you want something done, find a busy person to do it”. I sure wasn’t that consistent with exercising when I had plenty of time to myself. Or maybe that’s just me?

Y.G. wrote this on October 23rd, 2007 and filed it under Exercise Tips |