No Time for Fitness…Use Fitness to Make Time!
Use your time wisely.
One of the best bi-products of summer is the misconception of having more time and being able to accomplish more. Sure the sun comes up earlier and sets a little later but the 24 hours in the day still stays the same! The increased daylight hours certainly give us the opportunity to do more, but interestingly enough, people still struggle to utilize the time effectively and are just as busy as before. As such and besides money, TIME is the most common reason given by individuals as to why they fail to stick to any health and fitness plan. I mean, how many times have you said or heard excuses along the line of:
“I don’t have time to get to the gym”
“I don’t have time to track food”
“I am too busy at work, I don’t have time”
“Working out takes too long, I don’t have time”
I know I have said one of these a time or two.
Did you now, the average American lives around 77 years of age, or about 28,000 days. If you’re 35 … you have a little over 15,000 of them left. Wowzas, that doesn’t seem like a lot for some reason.
Now, I’m not telling you this to depress you. I am telling you this because once a day is spent, you can’t get it back.
It is completely up to you and in your control on how you use that time.
You can take the time that was deposited in your account when you were born and invest it in activities that make you happier and healthier. Or you can invest it in activities (or inactivities) that deteriorate your quality of life … or, worst-case, may even shorten it. You can be an action-taker or a procrastinator (“I’ll go to the gym later … I’ll start next week … I’ll cut out the sweets and junk food after vacation …”). You can surround yourself with supportive people who want to lift you up and help you achieve your goals … or with energy and time vampires who don’t have your best interests at heart and suck the life out of you.
Today is the currency we’ve each been gifted to invest how we choose … to build the body and health that we want.
And what if I told you that by virtue of doing this you “create” more time!
Over the past couple of weeks one of the most common themes I have been hearing across the slew of podcasts is how we are time bound and how important it is to use our time wisely. This isn’t necessarily a new point of topic, but as the world becomes more frantic we begin to “lose time.” Whether that be because of increasing demands or for many, the inability to separate those that consume our time, it is more important than ever that we try to optimize our use of time, or “create” more time.
In fact, last week I wrote about the compounding effect of fitness, and that by providing consistent action your body will increase the capacity to do more, and through the compounding nature, will eventually lead to substantial change. Time is one of these areas where this happens.
Walk your way to more time?
Let’s take the act of walking, a pretty common, regular and basic occurrence. Whatever your abilities are right now, the process of going through your daily activities that include walking probably take you a certain amount of time to complete, whether that be walking up and down stairs, walking to and from the mailbox or around your block, or even walking between your car and work or a grocery store. Either way, based on your current level, the time is takes to complete these tasks is dependent on each step you take and the effort to take those steps.
However, if I take you through a training program and improve your leg strength by even 1%, or decrease your overall fat mass by even 1lb, the transitional effect on your walking capabilities have now improved significantly. In both of these examples, each step is now conducted with a little more force, or with less resistance applied onto the body and ultimately through each repetition you have now projected your body through space more quickly — thus you move from point A to point B faster — “creating” time for yourself with equal or lessor amounts of relative effort.
Read this again…You create more time for yourself with Equal or Lessor amounts of relative effort. WOW!
We can apply this same principle in other areas of our lives. Sleep for example is one area that many clients have difficulty with, whether it be the number of hours of sleep or the quality of their sleep. In both cases, the client ends up dealing with adverse effects from the poor sleep, creating a ripple effect of “losing time.” For example, a typical response from clients with poor sleep is that they are not as productive through the day, they are more fatigued, they are slower getting out of bed (or even stay in bed for longer) and show a noticeable change in their mood states as a result. Flip this script and now you are creating time. If you begin to improve your sleep, whether that be improving your fitness, improving your ability to recover, eating better foods, or improving your overall routine to practice better sleep habits then the residual effects may be that you are more productive, a more invigorating mood state, more able to get up at a regular time to begin the day, and with a feeling of more energy to complete the tasks ahead of you. All in all, you are creating, or freeing up time.
Does this mean you are using the time more wisely?
Not necessarily, but now you are creating the opportunity to have more time.
If you looked back over your years, how many moments in your life have you thought
“If I only had more time, I’d do…?”
Now look forward and ask
“If I have more time, I am going to do…!!”
Treat each day as if it’s 1,440 minutes you have to invest in YOU being happier and healthier. And by doing so, you give yourself time to do more, or make the time you do spend, to be easier and less “frantic”, there’s enough of that in life anyway.
Dr. Dan Dodd is an Exercise Science professional and Coach for BSL Nutrition. Dan is an avid writer on nutrition, exercise, metabolism and body composition. If you’d like to receive more stories, subscribe to his weekly emails.
