Squeeze Exercise In When You Can

It seems like over the last six months, it’s been harder to complete my exercise routine. I’m not sure what changed, but when I first began this weight loss journey (now fitness journey since I’m at a healthy weight), I was able to complete my entire routine, and was showered and dressed by 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning. Now, it feels like I can’t get started.

I have more morning email to get through (newsletters, forum posts, and the like), and I now get started exercising around 7:30 and 8:00 (am usually out of bed by 6:00). I have a hard time completing my elliptical workout if I don’t eat. I need that food to get me through. My morning coffee won’t cut it unfortunately. So I wait until I eat breakfast before I jump on it.

It takes me about 45 minutes to an hour to do 30 minutes of elliptical work. I need to cut my breaks down to shorter amounts of time, and I am working on it. I feel like I’m under a time crunch, and I don’t know why. I know everything will get done that needs to get done, I just have this expectation of when I want to get it done.

Well, life doesn’t work that way. Life is erratic and inconvenient. Surprise visits from family, bad night’s sleep, or whatever else might make it difficult to stay on a normal schedule, things happen. You need to do things when you can. If you can’t get in your morning workout, then do it in the afternoon. If it comes down to it, do it in the evening. Just get it done.

Take today. It’s Wednesday. I have strength training scheduled along with a mile on the elliptical. Total workout time is probably an hour and a half. Do I prefer to do it all in one chunk? Sure! Will it? Probably not today. I will most likely get my strength training done before breakfast. But my elliptical workout might have to wait. I’m expecting a FedEX delivery sometime today, and they need a signature. So I need to be where I can hear someone knock on the door. If I’m at my desk, I can hear the truck pull up, but it will take me a while to get to the door. So I need to be out in the other room before the guy knocks and runs (why does it feel like they run around the corner as soon as you open the door?). So that also means, any writing work will have to wait.

My point is, my elliptical workout will happen, just not when I want it to. It might be 2 in the afternoon before I do it, and if it’s that late, I’m already preparing for an internal argument with myself. It seems like 2 PM hits and the exercise window has closed. There’s no window. If there is a window, it’s open all the time. I have to suck it up and do it.

I think I’ve convinced myself to exercise no matter what time it is (well, maybe not after 6 PM, hehehe).

I was a good girl yesterday, and got in my mile after the webinar and after I had lunch. And I’m actually writing this post at around 6 PM Tuesday. I’m squeezing writing in when I can too. I have a certain amount of things to accomplish in a day, and I have to squish it in where I can. Little bit here, little bit there, and before you know it, it’s all done.

I did my mile, and I made my goal of doing it in 300 revolution chunks. We’ll see how today goes. Here are my stats for yesterday.

Elliptical:
Distance - 1 mile
Revolutions - 1600
Resistance Level - 1
Endurance - Good. Stopped at 300, 600, 900, 1200, and 1500 revs.
Injury - None
Time - 32:00

Move when you can, just keep moving!