Why Do They Call it a Work Out…When it Seldom Does?
For Fitness Week, I really want to take a hard look (ok…not too hard) at my fitness routine and find ways to improve it. I want to be healthy. I want to have more energy. I have 2 major weddings and a 20 yr high school reunion to go to this year. Ideally, I want to look like Allison Felix. I’d settle for Jillian Michaels. So, here’s my routine.
Goal: Exercise 30-60 minutes 3-4 times a week. I like to do a combination of cardio (elliptical mostly) w/ strength training (moving those machines w/ the weights on them up and down for awhile).
Reality: Monday – I leave for work and get the kids off at 7:30 a.m. I was up ’til probably midnight the night before, so there’s no getting up early. I get home at around 6:00. There’s dinner to make, homework help, house cleaning, story-reading, bath giving, blogging, TV watching. Ok…Monday’s a bust.
Tuesday – See Monday. Repeat.
Wednesday – Day off. I don’t know what happens. Truly. A lot of housework accumulates.
Thursday – See Monday/Tuesday. Repeat (except change “get home time” to 9 p.m.)
Friday – It’s Friday!!!!!
Weekend – {chiping crickets}
Can anyone figure out where I’m going wrong?
{crashes head to the desk}
***Bonus Prize***One lucky commenter will win this book The New Rules of Weight Lifting for Women. The book 
explains how to lift like a man and look like a Goddess which of course is our workout goal, the Goddess thingy.
So what’s your best advice for getting the workout in? Comments will stay open on this until Sunday, February 1st at 7 p.m. Eastern.
Wow…your schedule sounds very similar to mine. Weird. What works for me is scheduling the time on my calendar. I can’t make myself get up early, either.
I write on my calendar: Tuesday, 9:00, treadmill.
Wednesday, 6:30, Turbo Kick.
Friday, 5:30, Pilates.
If it’s on my calendar, I’m much more likely to do it.
Sounds like my schedule, too. How can we all be on the same schedule?
I’ve been trying to work exercise into my day and much as I can. It’s not always easy to measure, but it has to show up on my body (or off my body!) at some point.
For example (I’ll start with Tues, because I’ve come to accept that Monday is an impossibly impossible day for me)
Tues-Thurs: Instead of taking the street car, I walk the last two mile to my office. Same thing but in the opposite direction, of course, in the evening. My next goal is to start taking the stairs (I work on the 6ht floor). I’ve also just planned to start walking for 30 minutes at lunch with a co-worker on Tues and Thurs. Wed I have a yoga class at noon.
Friday: Walk my son to school and then take the long way home. Same thing in the afternoon when I go to get him. That adds up to about 4 miles for the day.
Sat: Hike a 6 mile loop near my home.
Sun: Whatever I can do with family in tow. A few weeks ago we went to see a lighthouse. There were 300 steps down a cliff to get it. The kids thought it was fun. I thought it was hard. Especially on the way back up!
It’s not perfect yet and I still need to work some strength training in. Does lugging my laptop back and forth to work count?
Maybe we should ALL go back to bike riding. With the gas, and going green, I wish we had more room on our roads for bike riding. But my schedule sounds like yours. Something has to give for me to work out. Oh well…there is always tomorrow !
I schedule workouts into my day. Tuesdays (husband’s work from home day), Friday (my friend comes over to babysit for 2 hours while I run to the gym… and run IN the gym, for that matter) and Sundays (husband’s home to watch the kiddo). Also, I do the 100 pushup challenge on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. When the weather is nice, the child, husband and I walk on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (2.2 miles)
Lynn…you’re who I wanna be when I grow up.
I was doing evening workouts begrudgingly until recently. I hated that they took up precious time for me to run post-work errands, make a healthy dinner, watch Lost and Grey’s Anatomy.
If I had workout equipment at home, I would do it at night in front of the TV. In fact, on bad weather days, I’ve been known to do that. I have those tension band thingies and a set of 5, 8 and 10lb weights.
What I have found works best is morning workouts–despite the fact that I swore I would NEVER EVER UNTIL MY LAST DYING DAY BE THAT PERSON. You know–the one who wakes up @5am and is home from her workout before the sun even rises. What I find is that it gives me more energy for the day, I’m less likely to bail out, I prepare better/healthier dinners and I fall asleep faster at night.
Tape/DVR the TV shows. You’ll save yourself a good 15-20 minutes per hourlong drama. Don’t use the computer after 8pm. Isn’t that what lunchbreaks and work is for? Go to bed by 10/11pm. Give it a couple weeks, making sure to set your coffeepot timer so you can at least appreciate a little caffeine before you’re on your merry little workout-way.
Good luck!
I was talking to this really impressive woman about her training schedule for the Boston Marathon – she’s a top regional exec for a huge telecom, her husband is an exec too, she’s got two kids and always made their lunches and birthday cakes and what have you. And I marveled that she was able to keep up her training when me, with my much less-busy life, let life get in the way. What she told me really struck me. She said “Make it like brushing your teeth.” I don’t know if that will be helpful to you, but it really stuck with me. And when I make workouts just as important as brushing my teeth – something I do as a matter of form, as an intractable part of my day, I make sure I get myself to the gym.
Where the book in question would come in very handy indeed!
No matter what time you set to work out, a great way to make it happen is to have somebody meeting you there who you do NOT want to call and cancel.
I know if somebody else is depending on me to show up, rather than it just being me doing it for me? Then I am 98 percent more likely to get there no matter what else is going on.
Plus, working out with a buddy means talking while working out, which makes it more aerobically challenging and a lot more fun.
The Buddy System. That’s my secret to keeping to a workout regimen!
I’ve heard so much about this Jillian Michaels lately!
I get my workouts in 6 days a week by scheduling the time for it. It’s the time that I set aside to do something good for my body and mind. I always block out 2 hours to exercise everyday. I make sure that it’s something that I enjoy doing and that helps. For the days that I can’t make it to the gym I will do my step aerobics while watching my favorite tv show that I have recorded. Or I will do the wii fit and laugh at myself doing yoga poses. You just have to find something that you like to do and then you always feel so much better after you have exercised.
I have to do my workout right after work with the girls from work – they are my motivator & the socialization helps! If I were to go home… it probably wouldn’t happen!
I dance around with the baby at night. Lots of hip swiveling, arms rotating, booty shaking and that’s just me. Oh, yeah, the baby dances, too.
Aloha! Because my DH works evenings at the newspaper, and I have little girls (9 & 7), I wake at 3:20 a.m. and get to 24 Hour Fitness by 4 a.m. for 35 minutes on elliptical, then arms and ab work for an hour-long workout. I’m out of there by 5, showered and at theBus stop by 5:45 to go to work. I love that I get 8 points for that workout! I do the elliptical for 60 minutes on weekends, more points! Working out gives me an incredible outlook as I start my day. And it also gives me reason to smile when I dress for work. The workouts, combined with WW, give me RESULTS!
I hate beer; I need to get back to the gym BADLY; and I’d love to win that book!
Lo
Wow, you have such a busy schedule! I just try to get up early and get my workout in. It isn’t easy but I know if I don’t get it finished early, it probably won’t happen. The sad thing is I’m a SAHM (unless I’m substituting) and I have all day to get it done. Amazing how I can find so many other things to do instead of working out!!
P.S. That books sounds AMAZING!!!