Ditch the Time Wasters
Along with 1) choosing an eating plan for life, 2) setting realistic achievable goals, and 3) working at both of those things consistently, the final pillar of the “Ready, Set … Goals” series is prioritizing.
You must actively prioritize healthy habits in your life or they will not happen.
We all get 24 hours in a day, right? Everybody divides it up differently: some work is paid, some is unpaid, some time is spent recreationally, some is sleep. Hopefully some of your time is spent with people who love and support you.
Does that add up to 24 hours? Only you can answer that. But the way you choose to spend your time – how you prioritize activities within those 24 hours – has everything to do with whether or not you will be able to lose and keep off excess weight, and ultimately improve your chances to live a long, healthy life.
If you’re like most of us, you probably already feel like you’re pretty time-crunched.
To prioritize healthy eating and exercise you must identify and begin eliminating those “time wasters” in your life. Some of this time will come from recreational time, but not all of it. Some of it may come from the “life’s too short to waste another moment doing this” activities. Yep, been there. Ditched those.
Time wasters come in two forms: activities and people. Today we’re talking about the time wasting activities in your life.
There are probably activities that consume your time without really thinking about them. How much time did you spend on Facebook last week? Watching television? And even though you don’t watch them, the mere fact that millions of people watch YouTube videos of cats doing silly things tells me that a whole lotta people have a whole lotta time on their hands, despite our constant protestations that we’re all too busy to exercise and prepare healthy food.
These are the easily identifiable time wasters, but what about some of the harder ones? Maybe you’ve been PTA Treasurer for three years because nobody else will step up. If you’re doing it out of obligation, at the expense of things that could bring you more joy and better health, then it may be time to pass the baton. It got done before you were around to do it and it’ll get done after you’re gone. Let it go.
Shopping for and preparing healthy food doesn’t necessarily take any more time than shopping for and preparing unhealthy food, but it does take more thoughtful planning.
Carving out 60 minutes a day to exercise represents only 4% of your day, but it’s time you were doing something else, so it’s a shift in priorities no matter how you look at it.
In order to prioritize your new healthy habits you must be willing to identify and ditch the time wasters.
Because we each only get 24 hours in every day and a limited number of days on this earth we need to be intentional about how we spend our time. If we focus on those activities, people and pastimes that bring us the pleasure we crave we’ll be more inclined to make healthy choices and ultimately be richly rewarded with better health.
Losing weight is really hard. But it gets easier. And you’re so worth this!
Let’s go get it!