Your alarm goes off so you can get up for your morning workout. But you're tired so you press the snooze button and decide to sleep in. Are you being lazy or doing the right thing? Here's a few guidelines to help you decide.
- Energy creates energy. If you're tired instead of saying "I'm too tired to exercise!" instead say "I'm so tired today, I really NEED to exercise!" Even a quick, easy workout will wake you up, get the endorphins flowing and make you feel great about yourself. You just have to change your mind-set.
- Watch the clock. Research shows we need 7 plus hours to achieve optimal health and maximize fat loss. So if you're well below 7 hours, it may be better for you to get a bit more shut-eye and workout later in the day.
- Let your body decide. One of our friends uses this guideline to help her. When the alarm goes off, if she falls immediately back to sleep, it tells her her body really needs a little more time to repair and recover. But if she just lays there awake pondering whether she should get up, then she knows she's just being lazy and she should get up and workout.
Here's another tip: Keep a chart with your planned exercise schedule, and then keep track of which workouts you skip and which you complete. Doing this, I discovered that the only workout I ever seem to bail out on is my Tuesday morning swim. Thursday's swim? No problem. But Tuesday is another story. I theorize that the weekend's activity combined with my Monday morning long run finally catch up with me by Tuesday, making it really hard to get out of bed. Soooo, by switching my Tuesday morning swim to Tuesday evening instead, I get to "sleep in" a little later on Tuesdays *and* I still get my workout done, without the guilt of bailing out on it in the a.m.
ReplyDeleteThe key is: listen to what your body is telling You. It's smarter than you think!
Susan Otcenas
http://www.TeamEstrogen.com
http://blog.teamestrogen.com/
Great suggestion Susan!!!
ReplyDeleteI have a booklet that I write down all of my workouts. It lets me keep track of what I am really doing and then when I do sleep through my alarm I can look and say hey you did deserve that day off.
ReplyDeleteI also find cross-training to be very helpful. Five days a week I go to the pool. Two days a week I go to the beach and run with my dogs so the variety helps me get up some mornings!!
I have also found more energy for everything I do with Qivana.
Karen