As promised last week, I will share every Friday how my progress towards fitness is going. Though I do not have any statistics to share yet (my scale broke, darn it), I can happily say that I have been working out 6 days a week. Yep, that's right, this busy mom has figured out how to get between 30-90 minutes a day, six days per week, of exercise in.
I have been doing it by breaking my workout times apart. Instead of me exercising for a full 90 minutes at one time, I instead choose to do several workouts during the day. For example, I try to wake up early every day, and if I succeed I sneak in 30 minutes of aerobics. Simply doing this helps wake me up so well that I do not need coffee, tea, or Diet Coke in the morning! After work, I bike for 30 minutes before my kids get home from school. Then, I resume my "must do" activities like cleaning, prepping dinner, making sure my kids do their homework, etc. Finally, after the kids head to bed, I put on my favorite non kid friendly tv show, and do another 30 minutes of biking. The kids are asleep, I'm able to have a few minutes of guilty pleasure time in, and get fit all at the same time! In doing things this way, I cannot use the excuse that I do not have enough time to get in a quality workout, and neither can you!
If it wasn't enough to simply say that breaking apart my workout times, it's actually healthier to achieve things this way! Some big named universities - such as Harvard - have done studies on whether or not exercising in in spurts gives the same health benefits as completing the full workout time in one sitting. The answer is that, yes, it does, so long as the workouts are done in at least 15 minute spurts. If you're strictly looking for weight loss benefits, the New York Times has said spurts as low as 10 minutes will be enough. By breaking apart exercise times, it also helps keep the metabolism higher through the day. When we work out once, the boost is higher, but then the majority of us spend the rest of the time sitting because of work, or other normal activities (like, sadly for me, TV watching).
Join me every Friday as I continue on in this journey! 40 pounds in 105 days here I come!
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