How to find time for cooking and exercise?

Ask yourself: does your current time allocation reflect your true priorities?

4 Make improvements at 15-minute intervals

To align your current time allocation with what you want to achieve, gradually replace low-value activities with high-value ones, for example:

• Spend 15 minutes more cooking.
• Spend 15 minutes less surfing the Internet or browsing social networks.
• etc.

5 Create a system that supports your priorities and makes them easier to implement

By taking a little time to plan initially, you can create an environment around you to eat healthier, significantly reducing the time it takes to prepare healthy meals and exercise, for example:

• Keep fresh and healthy food – fruits and vegetables – in plain sight.
• Reduce or eliminate treats available at home and at work.
• Make a habit of cutting vegetables, preparing proteins (meat, fish, etc.) and other ingredients for several days ahead in the mornings or on weekends so that you can quickly prepare a tasty and healthy meal when the time comes.
• Keep berries and greens in the freezer so you can quickly make super tasty and healthy smoothies.
• Join a sports club closest to home or work.
• Keep a gym bag ready in your car or at the front door of your house/apartment.
• Organise meetings and events in a park or gym.

6 Plan cooking and sports activities in your diary

If we waited until we felt like doing something, many of the important things would never get done.

Therefore.

Plan your priorities and stick to all the activities you have planned.

7 Track your progress

At the end of each week, ask yourself – How did you use your time? Did you spend enough time on improving your health and fitness?

If the answer is ‘yes’, mark what has helped you most to change your habits and keep going.

If “No”, what was it that got in your way?

• Miscellaneous low-priority ” sands things”? If so:
  • Combine ” sand things” with fitness or cooking, for example – watch TV while pedalling the exercise bike or preparing a meal;
  • Reduce environmental “irritants”, for example – move the TV to a room you do not normally stay in, use an app that limits the time you use the Internet, etc.
  • Try to find stronger motivation. Ask yourself again – Exactly why do I want to eat better and move more?
• Other high-priority jobs “big stone things”? If so:
  • Set smaller health and fitness goals and continue to improve the environment around you;
  • Delegate some tasks to others, for example – organise childcare so you can go to the gym, etc.
  • Combine “big stone things”, e.g. – invite the family to help with cooking, organise work things while you walk in the park, etc.
  • Learn to create an environment around you that supports your priorities and set realistic goals.

Key takeaways

Healthy eating and fitness are just the tip of the iceberg – supported by prioritising, managing and planning our environment.

We always make time for what we think is the most important.

In other words, we cannot find time to improve our health and well-being because they are not our priority.

И.

Often, they are not a priority for us because, at this particular moment, our health is still “within the norm”, and we feel more or less well.

And we don’t think or don’t want to think about how our choices today will affect our health and well-being a month, a year, five years from now… How will we feel then? What chronic diseases will we suffer from? Will we be able to restore our health, and if so, how much time and money will it take?

Trust me, at 50, life is just beginning, but to enjoy it, you need to stay healthy and full of energy.

So – exercise, have a balanced diet and stay healthy!