Finding the Time to Exercise

time to exercise

“I can’t find time to exercise.”

Stop Making Excuses

I hear this excuse time and again, often followed by “I’m too tired to exercise” or “I can’t exercise because of INSERT REASON HERE“. My patients often look at me sideways when I answer – “no matter how chaotic your life is from day to day (trust me — as a mother of two, I understand chaos), there is always time to exercise if you make it a priority”.

The word exercise conjures up different images for different people. Some envision women in form-fitting spandex jumping around in an aerobics class; others see men lifting weight-laden barbells with bulging biceps. For many, these images are intimidating. What they need to remember is that exercise is walking the dog, carrying laundry up and down the stairs, playing soccer with your kids, an intimate evening with your spouse. It is anything that gets you moving and keeps you moving.

Reaching Your Target Heart Rate

Will walking the dog around the block help you lose weight? Not necessarily. We need to consider the intensity of the exercise, how long it is performed, and how many calories it burns. One way to measure the intensity of exercise is with your target heart rate (THR).

Your THR represents a zone or range that your heart rate should fall within to ensure that you are training aerobically. Training below your target zone may not be intense enough to burn enough calories or improve your cardiovascular fitness. Training above your zone means you’re working anaerobically (without oxygen) and inefficiently. You can actually do harm this way.

A THR range is listed in percentages of your maximum heart rate (220 – YOUR AGE IN YEARS).

  • Low exercise intensity: 40 to 50 percent of your maximum heart rate
  • Moderate exercise intensity: 50 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate
  • High exercise intensity: 70 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate

The Fat Burning Zone

How hard you should exercise depends on your fitness level. In general, beginners should work at a lower range and advanced exercisers should work at a higher range. Some people have exercise restrictions due to injury, health conditions, or medications (like beta-blockers) that will affect their recommended intensity level.

It was once thought that the “fat burning zone” was in the 60-70% range, but the tides are turning. If weight loss is a goal, high-intensity exercise may be more effective. A 2010 study in JAMA showed that women need to exercise 60 minutes daily to prevent weight gain — this was at a moderate exercise intensity.

Alternatively, a study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology showed that interval training every other day for two weeks increased cardiovascular fitness by 13 percent and fat burn by 36 percent. Interval training alternates exercise between the moderate and high ends of your target heart range. The advantage to interval training is that you can exercise for 20 to 30 minutes and get the same benefits as a longer sustained moderate aerobic workout.

Understanding how to better approach your exercise goals may still not be motivating enough to actually get started. For this, you really need to understand all that exercise has to offer. Yes, exercise can help you lose weight but it has many other advantages.

Exercise — The Mood Booster

It mentally helps with the following:

  • Depression
  • Focus and concentration
  • Self-esteem and confidence
  • Sex life (increases female arousal and decreases male erectile dysfunction)
  • Stress management

Plus, exercise is fun!

Exercise — The Physical Enhancer

It physically improves the following:

  • Coordination and balance
  • Endurance and stamina
  • “Good” HDL cholesterol (HDL > 60 actually protects your heart)
  • Muscle tone
  • Reduces fatigue
  • Sleep quality and duration (when performed earlier in the day)

Exercise — The Risk Reducer

It decreases your risk for the following:

  • Breast cancer
  • Cardiovascular disease (coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, stroke, etc)
  • Diabetes and metabolic syndrome
  • Osteoporosis

Finding Motivation

  • Be open to change. Remove “I can’t” from your vocabulary. You will not succeed in long-term weight control if you do not commit to regular physical activity. For general fitness and weight maintenance, that means at least 3-4 times per week. For active weight loss, that means 6-7 times per week.
  • Consider a gym membership or your own exercise equipment. Putting your money where your mouth is can increase accountability (why would you waste money on a membership you don’t use?) and it certainly strips you of excuses.
  • Do what you love. If you hate going to the gym, going to the gym is not going to “work out” for you in the long run. What do you enjoy doing? That is what you should incorporate into your routine.
  • Find an exercise buddy. Committing to working out with someone else not only makes the experience more fun and social, it too adds a level of accountability. You won’t want to let your friend down. You’re affecting their health as well as your own.
  • Mix it up. If you perform the same activities time and again, you can get bored, and falling off the wagon becomes a near inevitability. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things.
  • Wake up earlier. If you find it hard to fit exercise into your daily routine because of a busy schedule (a 10 hour work hours, a long commute), try to wake up a half hour earlier. Sacrificing 30 minutes of sleep is not going to compromise your health. Remember that if you exercise regularly, your sleep quality actually improves.

Helpful Tips

  • Decrease convenience. Take the stairs instead of the elevator whenever you can. Park at the far end of the parking lot to encourage yourself to walk more.
  • Incorporate the exercise triad. For true overall fitness, exercise should include “cardio” (aerobic) as well as weight training and flexibility exercises. You will reach better long-term gains if you include all three components in your regimen. Hint: Yoga meets all of these head on!
  • Make effective use of work breaks. Whether it’s an hour or minutes only, most of the time is spent “sitting around”. You earned your break. Do something meaningful with it. Take a walk, climb a stairwell, GET MOVING.
  • Reduce screen time. Whether its television, the internet, or video games, America is glued to their screens. This keeps us in a fixed position when we’d be better off moving around. The world will still go round if you pull yourself away from these energy hoarders. Try to cut back to less than 2 hours a day for ANY screen time, even on weekends.
  • Work out during commercial breaks. Our American way of life often leads to a big meal at the end of the day followed by a long period of time watching television or “unwinding” from our busy day. Why not exercise during those useless commercial breaks instead? Do some jumping jacks, run in place, do some stretches.

Starting an exercise regimen can be a daunting task. At first, it may feel that you don’t have the energy to exercise and then you feel fatigued from the physical exertion of having exercised … at the beginning. After two or three sessions, this turns around and you begin to reap the benefits. Stick to it. Your body will thank you for it.

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