By: Leo Fontana
If you are a parent, you know your life is busy. We have so many different things we are responsible for in our day to day life and then you throw some kids in the mix, which means we are fully responsible for these human being’s lives in everyway. This can make you even busier and the things that you used to do for yourself you have “no time” anymore.
Busy is a word we like to use when we can’t find the motivation to complete a task. Yes, I know many of us have many different things we have to do with work, health, relationships and just life in general. However we need to prioritize what needs to be accomplished first, this means as a parent a lot of the time you must put your kid’s needs first because this might mean their lives. So what do we do with the rest of the time we have for ourselves besides work?
In my opinion, I believe exercise is the best outlet for your total health of mind and body, it is one hour that you give yourself to work on the most valuable item you have, your health. You give so much to everyone else all day, at work, at home that you deserve one hour to exercise and clear your mind from any negativities going on.
“One hour a day?! Are you kidding me I haven’t even showered or brushed my teeth in 3 weeks, how can I have time to work out!? You are CRAZY!”
That is what a lot of people probably think when reading this, Well I can say is if you don’t have one hour then make one hour or make 30 minutes. But make some time for yourself before you crash. When my wife and I had our little baby girl things were crazy, my parents came to town from Brazil (they don’t speak English), we were trying to figure out how to make this beautiful baby girl not just survive but thrive and everything was “busy” and unknown, and it still is. However I had 10 minutes on the day that I took to either go on a run or do some push ups or sit ups, that alone helped keep my sanity. I was very lucky that Double Edge gave me two weeks of leave so we could figure things out as a family but that was almost harder because I went from being at work all the time to staying at home and learning how to change diapers. Everything got flipped upside down but the one thing I could go back to that I knew would help everything around me was my 10-30 minute exercise routine.
One cool thing I found out last week for those parents that “can’t find time to work out” is this, if you have an iPhone, I challenge you to look up your phone usage, click settings, battery, then in the right center of the screen click on the clock picture and that will show you how much time you spent on each app of your phone over the last 24 hours. The numbers are scary, for Millennials this can be as high as 16 hours on one app in the last 7 days, that is technically 2 full days worth of work, or a lot of working out. Haha! So rethink where you are spending your time and let’s make a world that is fitter, healthier and happier.