How to make time for fitness while juggling a career
Chasing a successful career can be a demanding and frustrating job. All those appointments, seminars, and webinars in your schedule along with other daily obligations make you cornered and annoyed without time to take care of yourself. Maintaining your physical and mental health should be one of your top priority for you. In this post, I will give you some useful tips and guidelines on how to incorporate fitness into your daily routine.
Make a realistic frame for your workouts
This is obviously a first step where you should take a closer look at your daily schedule and figure out which part of the day best suits you for a quality workout. Some people find morning as the best time to train, while others will train after lunch or in the evening. It’s absolutely up to you to find a suitable time and make sure you stick to it. I am sure that you are committed to your job, brainstorming new ideas and dealing with complex tasks and problems, never missing scheduled meetings and appointments.
My advice to you is to make fitness a part of your daily tasks just like all other obligations. Once you’ve determined the time of day to work out make sure to add your workouts to your calendar or planner. Make sure to never skip your workout by setting alarms or reminders. Establishing a new routine can be difficult at the beginning, you can be discouraged by low strength and stamina levels but don’t worry you should be aware that consistency is the key here. The good news is that everyone can improve their physique and get in shape regardless of age.
I was always looking forward to going to a gym and training after eight long hours sitting at the office desk. Thrust me when I say to you, once when fitness routine becomes a part of your life you’ll find yourself satisfied, more confident, stronger, and willing to challenge yourself and take your physique to the next level.
Create a workout routine
This is a second step you should seriously consider. What type of workout does fit you the most? In the beginning, any physical activity is welcomed especially if you are new in training you have a vast spectrum of exercises from fast walking, running, yoga and swimming to weightlifting and calisthenics.
Give yourself time and patience and you’ll become more comfortable exercising, gradually increasing the intensity and duration of your workouts.
You should also be aware of the fact that cardio workouts such as running, cycling, dancing, and hiking are great for improving cardiovascular health, overall stamina and also burning calories. Weight training can help you to increase the size and strength of your muscles and help you in burning calories in the long run, changing the ratio of muscle mass to fat in favor of muscles.
The bottom line is that cardiovascular workouts burn more calories during that one training session, but resistance training builds muscle which is burning calories. After a heavy weightlifting workout, you are still going to burn calories even on the day you are not exercising, especially I am referring to heavy compound exercises like squats, bench presses, and deadlifts.
The ideal workout should include cardio and resistance training, so you can fully benefit from each training season. You should also try to incorporate different types of workouts into your routine to avoid plateauing, try HIT (high-intensity interval training), or just mix your number of sets and reps. In case you are training for hypertrophy you should include more working sets into your routine with a higher rep range (8-12 repetitions)-more volume. If your focus is on getting stronger you should increase the amount of weight you are lifting, intensity (1-6 repetitions) with more time to rest between sets (3+minutes).
You should always take for yourself and make sure not to overtrain,- if you feel sore, sick all completely exhausted, don’t push yourself too hard and risk an injury. Give your body time to recover or adapt to new workouts. A Good workout plan along with quality nutrition and rest is a road to success.
Make a fitness your priority
Yes, it is easier said than done right? Think about all benefits of regularly working out, not only your physique will improve, but also will your stamina, and sleep and you’ll feel less stressed and moody. When you are at work use your lunch break wisely; you don’t have to just sit in an office or play games on your phone, you can use that time for short session cardio by leaving your desk and taking a walk around the building where you work.
You can also incorporate light stretching exercises or if you are sitting too much try using a standing desk or a stability ball, that is a great way to improve your posture which can lead to better overall health.
You don’t have to always attend meetings in a conference room, suggest a walking meeting with your colleagues.
Walking meetings can be a great way to get some fresh air, clear your mind, and get some exercise. If it’s not possible to have a walking meeting with colleagues, consider taking a phone call or doing a virtual meeting while walking around your office building.
Nutrition
A healthy and balanced diet is the essence of healthy life. Regardless if you are physically active or not you have to seriously take into consideration your calorie intake and what kind of nutrients are you consuming. An average person needs 2000 calories to stay healthy and functional but someone who is working out regularly certainly needs more than that if he/she wants to build muscle.(read more)
This is a very vast topic but if you want to stick to the principles, your healthy and balanced diet will look like this :
- Filling half of the plate with your fruits
- Filling just over a quarter with grains
- Filling just under the quarter with proteins
- Adding dairy on the side
You want to stay out of unhealthy and harmful types of food with low nutritional value and high concentrations of fat, salt, and sugar:
- Sugar
- Soft drinks
- Canned soups
- Doughnuts
- Potato crisps
- Margarine
- Alcohol
- Processed meat
Set realistic goals
Well, here we are part of where we should all be self-aware and admit that our physique will never probably look like a professional bodybuilder or man’s physique contester but our objective is to be a bit better each week each month, year… If you haven’t exercised for a while and expect to bench press three plates or run a marathon in a month is likely not to happen. Start with small achievable goals, exercising three times a week for 40 minutes, then as you progress try to increase the duration (volume) and intensity of your workouts.
Tracking your workouts progress is crucial, that will be solid proof of your consistency and persistence and results will be eventually reflected in a mirror. Remember to be patient and kind to yourself, because success is not a straight line, it’s a maze so don’t get discouraged if you have some kind of setbacks, especially in the beginning.
Celebrate your success no matter how small it is use that as additional motivation to keep going. You can always find workout partners or in slang- gym bros, then training should be more fun so you can encourage and motivate each other.
Conclusion:
There you go four crucial steps on how to make time for fitness, having a successful career is great, but having a functional and good-looking body is even better. Consistency and patience are essential here because your goal in the very beginning is to develop a habit and exercise routine. Don’t compare yourself with others, in the fitness world it is you vs you. Remember where you started and after some time (a couple of months or a year) look back and see by yourself how far you made it.
