Don’t Take a Holiday From Exercise

The holidays can be a busy time of year. There’s parties and other events, gift buying, making cookies and other treats, and all of it with increased traffic, increased crowds in stores, and other delays that eat up a lot of time.

Between lack of time and running out of energy from the increased demands, it’s common for self-care to fall by the wayside, despite the fact that it’s needed more than ever.

Exercise in particular tends to be one of the first “to-do’s” to be cut out of the schedule to make room for the extras, but that’s a big mistake!

When physical activity falls, stress and belt lines grow!

That said, sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done, and getting to the gym with all the traffic and other extra time drains can definitely become difficult, if not impossible.

But rather than cutting exercise out of your schedule altogether, it may be worthwhile to consider changing your physical activity to make it more time-efficient. You might not be able to fit in your normal workouts, but perhaps you can at least get some exercise in by changing what you’re doing and where and/or when you do it.

For example, maybe getting to the gym on a consistent basis is just not feasible. Instead of fighting traffic and rushing to get to the gym, perhaps switch to some physical activities you can do at home and/or during work breaks. There’s several options - from just going for a walk around your neighborhood, to doing body weight exercises (such as pushups and squats), to yoga poses, to doing simple resistance training with things like elastic bands or weights.

If doing an extended workout just doesn’t fit in the schedule, you can do a few quick workouts when you find a few minutes here and there. Knocking out a few pushups, doing a quick walk (even if just in-place), or doing a few dance moves or some shadow boxing for a few minutes can gt some blood flowing, burn some calories, and help you reduce stress. Short bursts of activity may not seem like much by themselves, but they add up – and they’re certainly better than nothing for keeping the extra holiday pounds and stress at bay.

Although the gym has equipment to make your workouts a bit more structured and challenging, you really don’t need any equipment at all to exercise. Walking and running, of course, don’t require any equipment (other than some decent footwear) and can be done outdoors or indoors – and if you don’t have much space, they can even be done in-place. If you have a few square feet of floor space, there’s several body weight exercise you can do (for ideas beyond the basics, search the videos on Youtube or TikTok for body weight exercises). Keeping a yoga or exercise mat handy can make things more comfortable if you do floor exercises.

If you do modify your exercise/activity to fit your more restricted schedule, don’t get too caught up in making it perfect. It doesn’t matter if it’s going to work all your muscle groups or give you the same cardio conditioning of your normal routine. The important thing is to do something rather than nothing!

Staying at least somewhat physically active during the busy holiday season will keep you feeling better, help keep stress manageable, and help keep extra pounds at bay.

Until next time…

George F. Best, D.C.