A Healthy Habit

Welcome to afitnewyou!  Today I would like to talk to you about making exercise a healthy habit in your life.  Throughout the day, we find and/or make time for healthy habits.  These healthy habits include things like brushing your teeth, flossing, washing your hands, or washing your face.  They are habits that take only a minute or two to do, but provide us with important health benefits.  We would possibly be repulsed to learn someone wasn’t doing one of these habits.  Exercise can and should be looked at as one of these healthy habits as well.  While I do understand that it takes much longer to get to the gym and get a workout in than it does to wash your hands in the bathroom, you can still benefit from adding in a few minute or two exercises into your day as part of a healthy habit.

Anthony, a member of the gym, was getting ready to take a fitness test for a local police department.  He was nervous about being able to complete the qualifying number of push-ups, so he asked me how he should train in order to pass that portion of the test.  Anthony had less than two months to prepare for the test, and he knew his upper body strength wasn’t the greatest as he didn’t get to the gym regularly.  He needed an easy to adhere to routine so I told him simply to do push-ups every day.  I told him to do one set of push-ups everyday before he took his shower.  This routine wouldn’t take more than a minute or two to complete.  He wouldn’t need to worry about getting to the gym; he would simply do the push-ups as a healthy habit before his shower.  I also advised him to try and complete one more push-up every other day, so if he got 20 the first day, to get 21 on the third day, and 22 on the fifth day.  By doing push-ups everyday, he was able to add 16 repetitions to what he was originally able to do, and was able to pass the test.  But what he also did was he adopted this healthy habit into his daily routine, and maintained it even after he took the test.  He still does a set of push-ups every morning.

Even if you aren’t looking to pass a fitness test, you can still add a simple, healthy habit to your daily routine for no other reason but because it’s the healthy thing to do…just as brushing your teeth, or washing your hands is a simple, healthy habit.  You can add a set of push-ups, burpees, or jumping jacks before you take a shower if you are looking to add something that doesn’t take a lot of time, or, if you have a little more time, you can add something that takes a little bit longer such as taking a walk around the block after dinner.  Your goal should be to add something that takes a relatively short amount of time, minimal effort, and is simple to do, which can be maintained as a healthy habit.  You need to incorporate it into your daily routine as matter-of-factly as washing your face at the end of the day is.  Over time, this small little habit will have big results.

Most of us know the importance of making regular exercise a priority in our lives.  Unfortunately, when you think exercise has to be a whole process that requires significant energy and time for, you might not be able to find the ability to do it as regularly as you would like.  However, if we make exercise a simple and routine habit, it becomes a part of our lifestyle that we do with minimal effort.  It becomes a priority that we value.  And once that value is instilled in us, it becomes much easier to find the time for getting to the gym for the longer routines.  Making exercise a healthy habit is an easy way to put you on the path to find a fit new you!