Excerpt
Finding the Time Often the Energy Pie gets divvied up long before any of it gets put aside for fitness. This is a reality. Who wants to get up at some ridiculously early hour to work out before heading into the office? Who has the energy left at the end of the day to pack in thirty painful minutes of exercise?
Fitness is no longer a byproduct of living. You have to make it happen. Exercise requires physical energy to accomplish--and often a big dose of mental energy just to get out the door. Both of these elements take hefty slices out of the Energy Pie. Sometimes just the thought of adding a workout on to the other commitments in your life can be enough to activate the internal overload button.
So where can you find the time? How can you create the energy?
At first glance, it may look as if there is a finite amount of energy and time to split up. You need ten to twelve hours of energy and time for work and the commute in both directions. Another chunk has to be carved out to fulfill all the daily household and family commitments. Then, even the most sleep-deprived human spends some time in the sack. Where can you possibly find another thirty minutes or hour of that time pie to work out?
Scheduling: The Anatomy of a Day Here is a realistic model of a twenty-four-hour period in the average adult American's day:
The alarm goes off at six a.m. It takes forty-five minutes to get to work with the traffic. You have to be at your desk at eight a.m., but everyone shows up ten to fifteen minutes early at your company. So you rush through a shower, scan the paper while you grab some toast and coffee, and by seven a.m. it's out the door.
You work all morning, then have one hour for lunch. You take only from twelve-thirty to one p.m., however, because it's expected. In that half hour, you only have time for a fast-food fix and more coffee, hurrying all the time.
You are supposed to get off by five p.m., but there are projects that need to get done and people you need to talk to in different time zones. So you don't get out of the office until six-thirty at best. Most days it's seven.
You get home pretty close to eight p.m., unless you have to stop by the market or the bank first--and finally it's time for you. Forget a workout. You're starving, exhausted, and, well, tomorrow's another day. So you eat something that resembles dinner from eight-thirty to nine p.m. By the time the dishes are cleaned up, it's nine-thirty.
By then the day is D-O-N-E and so are you. The mind and body need some time to wind down. You look at mail, read magazines and, the next thing you know, it's eleven p.m. If you don't get to bed now, tomorrow is going to be a nightmare. Eleven p.m. to six a.m. is the buffer between today and tomorrow. If you're lucky, your mind won't try to solve the world's problems tonight and you will get some sleep.
And you don't even have kids yet.
Planning Makes a Difference Where is this person going to find the time to work out? Here are ten suggestions for this situation that probably mirror the reality many Americans live in.
1. Get up just a little bit earlier. Skip the shower, climb in the car, and drive to the health club wearing your workout clothes. Bring your business clothes organized on a hanger. By getting your training in before work, it's done and your mind is free to focus on the rest of the day. Energy is created with that freedom. Time is created because you miss rush-hour traffic, and your mind and body are humming, so you're productive from the moment you enter your office. The Energy Pie is working for you instead of against you.
2. You don't like getting up early? What are you doing for lunch? Conduct that business conversation in running shoes instead of over a glob of chicken Caesar salad. Get your boss to join you for a noon indoor cycling class at the club. Start a lunchtime walking group. (There's strength in numbers.) This is a whole hour of your Energy Pie.
3. Pack your workout clothes in the gym bag and keep them in the trunk of the car. Then you can do a workout on your way home, before collapsing into the easy chair. Take that run in the park before Junior asks you to help with homework that not even you can figure out. The bottom line here is that once you get home at the end of the day, the chance of getting out again is slim. So take the extra time before you head for home. Do a workout, and create more energy by transforming leftover, stagnant, sitting-in-the-office-chair energy into clean, oxygenated, workout-generated alive energy.
4. Meet your mate for a postwork, predinner swim. It'll get the juices flowing, and it always helps to have support. Your Energy Pie will be a little smaller in terms of time, but significantly bigger in terms of energy.
5. You have a family that needs and wants you around and who would strangle you if you didn't come straight home from work? Get some exercise equipment for the house. Put a treadmill in the garage or family room. You can work out at home, and the family knows you are at least within shouting distance. Get some free weights, a workout bench, and a floor mat. Use these to create your own circuit workout setup and invite the whole family to participate.
6. Give up some of your sacred television time and replace it with a workout. The average American watches about thirty hours of TV a week. Even a professional athlete would be hard-pressed to work out thirty hours in a week.
7. Do the workouts that require the most time on the days you have the time to do them. Stressing to fit in a two-hour workout on the bike during a one-hour lunch break defeats one of the benefits of exercise, which is stress reduction.
8. Cut back on work. Yes, just do it. Those reports, e-mails, faxes, projects, and briefs will still be there when you get back from your workout. And chances are you will be more efficient with better health and more energy than the slug next to you who wouldn't dream of skipping out early to meet people for a bike ride.
9. Meet your husband or wife, friend, or family member for a workout. Just knowing they will be waiting helps create the energy and motivation that may not exist when you are solo.
10. Use unexpected free time. Unexpected things get in the way of a workout, evaporate time, or drain your energy. But what happens when a slot of time suddenly opens up? Do you fill it with more work, just sit and vegetate, or head out for a quick jog? Do you burn up the time chatting with someone or invite them to sneak away for a walk? Do you go buy that dress you've been eyeing or fit in the workout that will make you feel better than any piece of clothing ever could?