I don’t believe in diets or putting a lot of ‘rules’ around yourself when it comes to creating a sustainable healthy lifestyle.
Mainly because completely taking out anything, especially if it’s something you really like will only lead to failure. There are definitely best practices, like drinking water throughout the day, eating plenty of fruits and veggies and limiting the sugar and salt in your diet, that will get you off to the right start.
So what is the 2 day fitness rule and why am I wasting my time writing about it?
Why so serious Caroline?
This is one of the fitness rules I do try to live by and encourage my clients to practice:
Don’t let more than two days go by without getting a workout in.
What does this mean?
It means that if you take two days off from exercise – your life gets busy, work schedule is overloaded – that’s ok! But you better get your butt in the gym on that third day.
After two days you get comfortable. Your routine for the week starts setting in and your mind starts telling yourself that you don’t have time to exercise, or you don’t need to exercise.
The two days over the weekend that you stay up to late or are traveling for a weekend getaway to visit friends and you skip your workouts – that’s fine – but don’t let Monday be a missed workout too.
The third day is the key. Don’t let your workouts go so that you are missing 3 – 4 in a row because that routine is so easy to keep. Our bodies are naturally lazy. If you give them the chance they will choose to catch up on 6 episodes of Breaking Bad before they spend 30 minutes on a treadmill. Don’t give into your laziness.
Workout even though you don’t want to. Exercise through the sluggish and tired feelings. You don’t have to run a 1/2 marathon, but you do have to move. Now you know, so no excuses. No more than 2 days without breaking a sweat!
What are other fitness rules that have helped keep you on track?