Constantly feeling like you’re pressed for time can undercut your efforts to lead a healthy and active lifestyle. Protecting your health always has to be one of your biggest priorities, so you need to be strategic about fitting your fitness goals into your busy schedule. If you don’t have enough free time in the day to take up an immersive exercise regimen, there are plenty of other things that you can do to get in shape while you’ve got a lot on your plate.
Make Your Workouts More Efficient
When you can’t spend as much time working out as you’d like to, you’ve got to take steps to make the most of each gym expedition. Plan how you’ll spend your time instead of playing it by ear, and integrate well-timed variations into your routine.
Try to save the bulk of your cardio that doesn’t involve strength training out of the gym. Use your gym time on cardio using equipment like a stair stepper or an elliptical machine instead of a bike or treadmill.
Fuel up both before your workout and during it. Without fuel, you may spend more time resting between sets. You could also just lose steam and have an overwhelming urge to call it quits early. Taking intra workout supplements can help you power through a high-intensity workout and give you a jump start on muscle repair.
Get Into Meal Prep
Your food choices could make or break your initiative to get in great shape. For people with a schedule that’s constantly on overload, time constraints tend to represent a barrier to good nutrition. If you’ve got a busy day, you’ll probably have to settle for whatever meal and snack options are the easiest or the fastest. However, convenience shouldn’t be the deciding factor in what you’re going to eat.
The way that you fuel your body has to support your fitness goals. Ultra-processed foods don’t have the nutrients that you need to build muscle mass or sustain healthy cellular function in any of your body’s systems. Moreover, making ultra-processed processed foods a mainstay in your diet could be terrible for your digestion.
Making meal prep can help you save time and money while making it easier for you to eat healthy. It spares you from having to make on-the-spot decisions about what you’re going to eat. Prepare meals that you can divide into multiple servings, and opt for foods that freeze well. Fix smart portions of healthy snack foods such as nuts and fruits.
Join a Class
You may be shying away from enrolling in a class because you’re worried about having time to go. In reality, participating in a group class is a good way to make physical activity a fixture in your weekly schedule. Once you’ve identified a workable time slot and you’ve committed to go, the fixed predictability of your class time is a workaround for some of the decision-making and willpower involved in a typical gym trip.
Another benefit of taking a class is that you’ll have guidance from a knowledgeable professional. Instructors can be a big asset because they’ve designed their classes to help students reach their full potential. They can give you input on your technique and give you useful feedback on what you can do to optimize your results.
A group atmosphere can be energizing, so you may feel a little more amped up when you’re being active alongside other people. Having a regular time to interact with people positively is mentally stimulating, and that type of positive engagement supports your energy levels.
Your health and fitness goals are important to you, so you need to take decisive action to achieve them. Don’t let everything that you have to worry about in life keep you from taking care of the one thing that you should care most about. Staying healthy and feeling good is going to help you accomplish everything that you set out to do.
