Too Busy to Work Out? Stop Giving Excuses: 20 Easy Life Changes to Get Fit

Excuses are tools which build monuments…… One of the number one complaints I hear from people is that they can’t find the time to work out and are too busy. This is just an excuse. You make time for the things you want has always been my mantra. If you want to sit on the couch and watch Tivo, you will. If you want to hit the gym and work on your sexy, you will make time for it.

As an attorney, no one knows better than I do what a hectic schedule is. There are some days that no amount of planning can allow me to get my gym time in. I recently read an article in Prevention which gives you a few tips on how to incorporate exercise and activity into your busy daily schedule. Experts recommend working out 45 minutes to an hour a day (30 minutes for beginners) for weight loss and fitness. But, if you are like me, you don’t always have a block of 30 to 60 minutes a day to devote exclusively to doing your workouts.

You can still exercise–you just need to sneak in the equivalent in resourceful ways.One study found that women who split their exercise into 10-minute increments were more likely to exercise consistently, and lost more weight after 5 months, than women who exercised for 20 to 40 minutes at a time.

1. When you go outside to pick up your morning newspaper, take a brisk 5-minute walk up the street in one direction and back in the other.

2. Try 5 to 10 minutes of jumping jacks. (A 150-pound woman can burn 90 calories in one 10-minute session.)

3. Cooking dinner? Do push-ups while you wait for a pot to boil.

4. Just before bed or while you’re giving yourself a facial at night, do a few repetitions of some dumbbell exercises, suggests exercise instructor Sheila owner and founder of The Oaks and The Palms, in Palm Springs, CA, who keeps a set of free weights on a shelf in front of her bathroom sink.

5. Walk around medical buildings if you have a long wait for a doctor’s appointment. “I always ask the receptionist to give me an idea of how long I have left to wait,” Cluff says. “Most are usually very willing to tell you.”

6. Walk to work if you can. “I walked to work for months, 1 1/2 miles each way,” says Mary Dallman, PhD, professor of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, and she really saw results.

7. If you dine out on your lunch hour, walk to a restaurant on a route that takes you a little bit out of your way.

8. If you have a meeting in another building, leave 5 or 10 minutes early (or take some time afterward), and do some extra walking.

9. On breaks, spend 5 to 10 minutes climbing stairs.

10. If you’re pressed for time and must wait for an elevator, work your abdominal muscles. Stand with your feet parallel and your knees relaxed. Contract the muscles around your belly button. Then elevate your upper torso, and release. Finally, contract your buttocks for a few seconds.

11. Use a ringing phone as an excuse to stretch your back. Stand with your feet astride. Imagine that you are encased in a plaster cast from your waist to your head. Gently tilt the lower part of your pelvis backward. Contract your abdominal muscles. Then gently tilt your pelvis forward.

12. Put away your remote and change channels the old-fashioned way–by getting up and walking to the television set.

13. Dance as if you were 16 again. Put on a music program or MTV. Then dance like crazy, advises Peg Jordan, PhD, RN, author of The Fitness Instinct. “Free yourself to think of movement as something that you have a right to do,” she says.

14. During commercials, jog in place. A 150-pound woman can burn up to 45 calories in 5 minutes.

15. On a work trip, pack your sneakers and an exercise video. Call ahead to make sure your room has a videocassette player. If it doesn’t, ask to rent one from the hotel. Better yet, we use DVDs now bring that and your laptop.

16. If you’re traveling by car, stop twice a day for short, brisk walks and some stretching.

17. During layovers at airports, avoid the mechanized “moving carpets” that transport travelers from concourse to concourse. “If you’re in between flights, walk around the concourse as much as you can,” suggests Cluff.

18. Book a hotel room between the fifth and eighth floors, then ignore the elevator. Better yet, take two stairs at a time. (Check with the hotel first because for security reasons some hotels do not allow guests to use stairs except for emergencies.)

19. When you go check your mail, jog to the end of the block and back.

20. Do calf stretches while riding in elevators.

Don’t let those excuse tools dig you an early grave.