6 Easy Steps to Burn Fat on a Busy Schedule
In my health and fitness business, I get the opportunity to talk with people from all walks of life about their health and fitness goals. Whether their goal is to lose weight, gain muscle, stick to a nutrition plan or program, improve their cardiovascular health, or simply to maintain their current fitness level they all have one common enemy—TIME.
For most of us, the #1 challenge in the quest to stay in shape is not exercising itself but understanding the best food choices and being able to actually fit an exercise routine into our busy schedules.
It’s tough finding the right balance for our health and fitness. So how do you do it? How do you balance the demands of family, career, important errands, relationships, organizational responsibilities, and working out? I have found that there are six keys that will help you to consistently incorporate your health and fitness plan into your already hectic life.
- Commit to a specific schedule
When you fail to plan you plan to fail. Don’t try to haphazardly select your food options and fit your workouts into your schedule without any rhyme or reason. Don’t think you’re guilty? If you’ve ever told yourself “I’ll workout as soon as I get some time”, you were in direct violation of this key principle.
In order to set yourself up for success, you will need to take the time to literally plan your meals and schedule your workouts into your weekly schedule. In order to be effective, you will want to follow your exercise routine at least 3 days per week. Anything less would be kidding yourself.
You will need to apply the same rigor to your health and fitness as you do to your job. For me, when it’s on the calendar it gets done. - Meal Preparation
Meal preparation includes the planning and preparation of meals in advance. These steps are very beneficial. Meal preparation allows you to prepare the right foods and control portion sizes. It promotes healthier eating and reduces the temptation of picking up unhealthy options at the vending machine or fast food restaurants. Meal preparation can save you money by reducing the number of times that you eat out. Just think about all of the things that you could do with the money that you save. - Utilize the weekend
One trick to help with your success is to use your weekends effectively and efficiently. For some, this might refer to your days off work during the week. Carve out some time to plan your meals for the week, including healthy snacks. Take this a step further by doing your shopping and preparing many of your meal options in advance. Also, plan workouts and other activities during this time. One of the benefits to this course of action is that your schedule is more flexible and under your control during this time. - Keep your health and fitness as a high priority
Although things will occasionally come up that will cause you to have to reschedule your meal preparation or workout you had planned, you must be vigilant in making sure that only the most important emergencies are allowed to temporarily take you off of your plan.
In the event that one of those important emergencies does happen and you can’t make your schedule, reschedule with yourself to make it up on the next possible day that you are available to do so.
One of the biggest mistakes that many people who have scheduled a workout program into their schedule make is allowing it to be bumped off of their schedule too easily. - Find an accountability partner
Don’t act on this alone. Let the important people in your life know what you are up to. Your spouse or love interest, parents, children, co-workers, and close friends will often pitch in and help you to meet your fitness or weight loss commitment to yourself if you make them aware and ask for their support. If possible, use these relationships to delegate some of your normal responsibilities or even allow you to shift appointments that you have with them as you restructure your schedule. Get them involved in your workouts, don’t hesitate to form a buddy system with them as you move forward with your program. Not only will you be successful, but you will also contribute to your accountability partner’s success. By the way, you can have more than one accountability partner. - Don’t beat yourself up
No matter who you are, there will be times that you just aren’t able to keep it up as you would like due to outside demands. Don’t be too tough on yourself when that happens. Just make sure that you get back on track as soon as you can and continue to press forward, doing your best to avoid slacking off again.
No matter what goals you have for health and fitness you CAN fit them into your hectic schedule and be amazingly successful!