The single most common excuse I hear from people is “I don’t have enough time to work out.” Let’s do this together, very simple math, seven days in a week, twenty-four hours in a day, which means there are 168 hours in a week. So, let’s just say for debate sake you work seven days a week eight hours shift, that’s 56 hours, you sleep eight hours, that’s another 56 hours, so we are 112 hours. You commute back and forth to work for let’s say two hours, now we are up to 114h hours. Ok so now you are going to give me the second degree dance about grocery shopping, running errands and family time. Ok! Let’s back up a bit and take three hours per week to do your grocery, we are now at one hundred and seventeen 117 hours. Clearly family time is paramount so you can take 40 hours out of your busy week to bond with the family, this brings us to 157 hours. Now you are left with eleven hours for errands but still the excuse hovers over your head and you have no time to take care of your health. Instead, you are going to spend the money you have been working so hard for at the doctor’s office because you don’t feel too good.
Everyone has enough time for health and fitness but it would seem that we are too busy giving energy to the things that are not so important to our everyday growth. The thing that has me scratching my head a bit is, people don’t skip out on exercise because they don’t think it’s good for them. People just don’t exercise because they’d rather be doing something else like eating junk food and hoping it won’t do them any harm. Studies have shown on average a person spends 15 hours on social media. So do you really ever have “no time” for working out? Let’s be real here, checking your WhatsApp and Facebook news feed is oftentimes way more important, valuable and enjoyable than working out. The statistics are very clear that this is true. However, all this information does is makes us feel guilty, spending so much time doing these things. So, truth be told the root cause of our sedentary lifestyle isn’t really a lack of time but a lack of what takes priority in our lives.
The term exercise might conjure up images of high intensity bootcamp classes, cross fit, endless running pounding the road or playing some sort of competitive sport. These are great but they are not the solution to the exercise problem for most folks. If you are not physically active each day then it’s time for a different mind-set of what exercise might look like for you. Finding any way to move your body is the key and that can have exceptional health benefits where you can feel the difference, maybe even more so than intense exercise will provide from an individual standpoint. Many folks think exercising has to be exhausting to be effective isn’t true and that gives folks another reason to hold on the excuses what everyone really needs is yes I can start by purposely moving my body every single day.