Happy New Year! As the new year begins and we start to tackle and refine our resolutions, I thought I would encourage you by sharing my tips on how to exercise even when you think you don’t have time.

So many of us make resolutions based on the body goals we want to achieve. As a young working adult still adjusting to a 40+ hour work week, it has been hard trying to fit anything other than work into my schedule. Last year I asked a number of people to share when they prefer to exercise. I was surprised that there was an even split between people who exercised in the morning, and people who exercised in the evening. However, everyone I spoke to seemed to have a lot of time to spare. So I had to find out what time, frequency, and duration of exercise I could fit in my schedule. This is what worked for me.

1. Decide what you need to work on.

Make a list of your goals! I know I need to work on my abs, legs and arms. You may have weight loss or muscle gain goals, which means you may need to work on your diet and exercise routine! Figure out what your goals are, and what you need to work on to reach them. 

2. Prioritize the steps you need to take. 

Unfortunately, we don’t have all the time in the world. So we need to prioritize our goals and work on each step one at a time. I’ll use myself as an example again. As I mentioned before, I need to work on my abs, legs and arms, but my top priority is getting my abs back. Maybe you just want to lose weight. Prioritize the steps you need to take before reaching your weight goal, and work on them one at a time: 1) eat better, 2) jog more, 3) get to the gym. Your first step can be changing your diet (check out the keto diet, my mom loves it). Meal prep is key! Then once you get used to your new food routine, see if you can wake up 20 minutes earlier to jog or just do some exercises to get your heart going, and so on. Please remember that everyone is different and there’s no one-size-fits all solution. 

3. Learn to cut out a little time during the day to work on your goals. 

I’m blogging about fitness not because I’m a guru, but because I just learned how to exercise even when I have no time at all. There are so many YouTube videos designed for people like us that don’t have time. I made abs my top priority, so to get me started, I looked up “5 minute an workouts” and found a ton! You can find so many quick exercise routines on YouTube, and since I’ve discovered this I have wanted to share it with everyone! Whether you have 5, 10, 20 or 30 minutes or more to spare, there’s a YouTube video for you. You can watch several depending on the time you have. The YouTube video I watch is a 5 minute ab workout, and I follow it as best as I can, but I still can’t do everything. Don’t be discouraged if you can’t keep up with the YouTube video. Let that be your motivation!

Life after college is a lot different. We often spend hours of our day away from home at our place of work, and the time we have to dedicate to hobbies and self care is very short. Learning how to utilize the little time we have to be productive and work on ourselves can be life changing. Now, with the tons of YouTube videos at our fingertips we have no excuse but to work towards our goals this year. 2019 is going to be a good one, I can feel it.

Happy New Year!

 - Amanda Nicole