Ideally we should be exercising 30 – 60 mins 6 days per week.
If you commit to 3 sessions per week, you have already halved the recommended amount.
If you miss one of those pre-planned sessions, you are now only doing one third of the recommended amount.
If, for some reason (work is too busy, the weather is horrible, you’re too lazy etc) you happen to miss another one of your pre-planned sessions, you are now only doing one sixth of your recommended sessions.

So what does this mean in the bigger picture?
There are 168 hours in a week. You should be sleeping for 56 hours of your week. So, of the remaining 112 hours in the week that you are awake, my recommendation is to be exercising a minimum 5.4% of the time. Not really much is it? Or is it? You might think it is. Most people obviously think it is, because they don’t even do that much. Maybe look at it this way, you are not exercising for 94.6% of the time.

If you commit to only 3 sessions per week, you are now only exercising 2.7% of your waking hours. Or, you are not exercising 97.3% of the time.
If you miss a session, you are exercising 1.8% of your waking hours, or you are dormant 98.2% of your waking hours.
If you miss two of your pre-planned session and you are still going to do your one session this week, you are now down to 0.89% of your waking hours exercising. Or, 99.11% of your waking hours not exercising.

Does this paint a little bit of a picture as to why we are a nation that is ever increasing in size?
Does it drive home how important it is not to miss your pre-planned sessions?
Does this make you realize how important it is to eat healthy food and not to eat more than your recommended calorie intake?
 
Here’s a quick quiz to fill in tonight after dinner:
1)How many hours have you sat down today?
2)How did you get to work today? a}walked  b}sat on a bus  c}sat on a train  d}sat in a car
3)What did you do on your lunch break? a}did a 45 minute exercise sessions b}went for a 45 minute walk  c} sat down and ate something healthy  d} sat down and ate something unhealthy
4)How did you get home from work today? a}walked  b}sat on a bus  c}sat on a train  d}sat in a car
5)What did you do when you got home today? a} did an exercise session b}went for a power walk  c}sat down in front of the tv/computer etc  
6)What are you doing right now? a}sitting down b} something other than sitting down

Now that you’ve filled it in, have a think about it. Work out how many hours you sit during your waking hours.
I don’t need to see your answers; this is just for you to think about.

Troy Shipsey

Fitta Bodies Personal Training

Centennial Park Outdoor Group Training Camp, Sydney

Tags: calories, exercise, Fitness, Motivation

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Fitness, Motivation, Weight loss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.