The Globe and Mail: Time-management tricks to stay healthy this holiday season

by | Dec 6, 2015 | Article, Covid Sanity Pack, Healthy Eating, Workouts and Exercises. | 0 comments

I love to exercise and I generally gravitate toward nutritious food, but making healthy choices during the holidays can be a challenge. Holiday treats are everywhere. Plus, I find it harder to find time to exercise between doing errands and holiday functions.

The trick to staying relatively healthy this December is to learn time-management techniques that make having discipline almost easy (or at least easier).

Here are five helpful tricks.

1. Keep a time journal

Before you can use your time more efficiently, you have to be aware of your daily patterns. Record time spent doing productive work, checking social media, sleeping, running errands, watching TV, playing video games, cooking and shopping for food.

2. Identify trends – learn how you can use your time more efficiently

Analyze your journal. If you don’t want to keep a journal, analyze your perceived daily habits.

Once you have an understanding of how you are using your time, figure out how to fit in exercise.

If you spend an enormous amount of time running errands, try going online to do grocery shopping, paying bills or buying gifts. Use the “found time” to go to the gym.

If you have a long commute, see if you can work from home one day. Use that “found time” to go for a walk or run. If you watch TV nightly, tell yourself you can only watch TV if you are working out at the same time.

If you watch your children play a lot of sports, do squats and lunges as they play. If you prioritize time with your family over exercise, play sports with your kids.

3. Make a ‘found time’ list

Compose a list of activities you can do when you find yourself with an extra five-, 15- or 30-minute block.

When you find an extra five minutes, do a set of squats or lunges, skip rope – or even dance around your living room.

When you find an extra 10 minutes, use your stairs to get a workout. Walk up the stairs twice to warm up. Then alternate jogging up the stairs and walking up the stairs for 10 minutes. Or do aerobics. Try high knees, jumping jacks or bum kicks.

When you find an extra 30 minutes, practise a sport with your family, go for a walk with your partner or download and do a fitness podcast. You could even do active errands: vacuum, rake leaves or shovel snow.

4. Remember to schedule

Of course you are too busy to work out if you haven’t carved out the time to train. Schedule training into your weekly calendar. Frame your workout as a “non-negotiable appointment.”

Have a realistic plan of attack that includes when and how you will work out, what exercise you will do and who you will do it with.

Be honest with yourself regarding how much time and energy you actually have (not how much you want to have), your finances, your social and work obligations and your equipment.

Originally published at The Globe & Mail