Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Busy Time of Year!!!

Wow!!  End of August is quickly approaching.  School is back in session for most people, and life is busy!!  So, how do you make time to eat healthy and still exercise?  You have to be very purposeful about it.  You need to put it on your schedule and make time for it.  Prepare food ahead of time, knowing that you will be getting home late and will be tempted to stop at a drive thru.  I have three boys all in different sports.  Some nights we aren't getting home until 8:30pm.  But, I either have dinner in the crock pot, or I have it in the fridge waiting to go in the oven.  I have fruits and vegetable cleaned and cut up, so that we are reaching for healthy snacks instead of unhealthy ones.  I look at my calendar for the week, I meal plan, and then I prepare the food the night before if it's going to be busy the next day.  Putting into practice all of these things will keep you on a healthy track.  It's very easy to get so busy, that we put our health aside.  Eating a clean, chemical free diet can have it's challenges, but, it doesn't have to.  It just takes a little pre-planning on your part.

As far as exercise goes, you need to find a time in your schedule 3-5 days a week, to get in at least an hour.  There was a cartoon I put on my facebook that was of a doctor talking to an unhealthy patient and the doctor said, "do you want to find an hour a day to work out or be dead 24 hours a day?"  That's probably the number one excuse I hear from people- I'm too busy and I have no time.  I guarantee we all have at least an hour.  It just means that we will have to miss something else, like television, computer time, video games, etc.  Your health is important and you need to treat it as such.  We all need reminding of this from time to time, as our days get busier and busier.  Go to the doctor and have them run some blood work to check your cholesterol, triglycerides, etc.  Sometimes seeing what our numbers are will give us a good kick in the pants.  I've always encouraged people to not put too much stock in weighing yourself everyday, but, instead seeing how your clothes are fitting.  When I was losing my baby weight from all my pregnancies, I would have what I called my "dream" clothes.  I would keep a pair of pants in my closet in the size that I wanted to be and I would try them on every 4-6 weeks.  That was a better judge of how my body was changing than the scale was.  Put encouraging messages on your refrigerator or use the app My Fitness Pal.  You can enter the number of calories burned during exercise as well as the food you are eating.  We have to be proactive about our health and keep ourselves encouraged to "keep on, keeping on".  Because, this is not just a fad we are going through or a "diet" that we are on.  This is a lifestyle change- for life!!!

If I can give you any encouragement please let me know.  You don't have to do this alone- you can have help!!  As always, let me know if you have any questions!!

No comments:

Post a Comment