Happy Healthy Blogger Thursday, everyone!

I am very excited to introduce you to Elizabeth from The Bare Midriff. You may remember Elizabeth because she won the Sriracha in the New Year, New You giveaway series. 

I love Elizabeth’s blog because she combines recipes with just good healthy advice. She had a recent post on women’s health magazines that I thought was really good and really smart. You should check her out!

And without further adieu, heeeerrrreeee’s Elizabeth!

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How to Make an Early Morning Workout Work Out

 

Hi, everyone!  This is Elizabeth over from The Bare Midriff, and I’m honored to be guest posting for Kimberly as part of her Healthy Bloggers series.

I’ve struggled for years trying to find my ideal workout time.  I know that regular exercise is one of the main paths to a healthy life, but finding time for it – well, that’s a lot harder to figure out.

When I was in college, I was on the crew team.  I woke up at 5 A.M. every weekday and started my workout with a half-mile warm-up run, followed by an hour of rowing on the beautiful St. Mary’s River.

I had the great blessing of watching the sun rise every morning, creating the first ripples in the otherwise glass-like water, and watching steam rise off of my own body as I rowed hard through an icy morning workout.

And my workout was done by 7 A.M.

That, my friends, was joy.  Relief.  Motivation.  A sense of true accomplishment before I even ate breakfast.

Unfortunately, when you don’t have seven people waiting on you to grab your oar, it can be a little difficult to get up that motivation so early in the morning.  That’s what happened after college; I started sleeping in the morning, and telling myself that I’d work out in the evening.  This was a good solution for a while, until a little thing called life got in the way.  Cleaning the house, making dinner, keeping up with the bills, socializing – it’s easy for these things to take precedence over something like exercise, which can be labeled as “secondary” – even though it’s far from it.

For years, I wobbled back and forth between working out in the morning (usually it was only a few days before my bed was Just.  Too.  Comfortable.) and working out in the evening (that turned into a lot of “I’ll go to the gym tomorrow – I’m too tired from work today”).

Recently, I decided to give the morning workouts another try.  This time, however, I went in with a plan.  A no excuses, one day at a time, you need to do this to be healthy plan.  And this time, it worked.

Today, I will share my plan with you.

  1. Put the alarm clock on the other side of the room.  This is essential.  I know myself well enough to know that if all I have to do is take one little hand out of my nice warm sleepytime habitat to hit that snooze button, I will.
    So my alarm clock is now on the opposite side of the room.  It’s tuned to a classical music station, so my wake-up isn’t so jarring.  But to get it to turn off, I have to get completely out of bed and walk.  And that’s half the battle of getting up anyway.
  2. Prepare the night before.  Another excuse I used to make is “I don’t have time to exercise in the morning – there’s too much to do to get ready for work.”  Nope.  There’s plenty of time – if I lay out both my gym clothes and work clothes the night before, have my lunch packed, my keys waiting by the door, my iPod charged…you get it.

    Keeping my thought processes as simple and brainless as I can in the morning helps get me out the door and in to the gym.

  3. Plan your visit.  I have a clear vision of what I’m going to accomplish at the gym that day. I don’t just say, “I’ll do cardio today.”  I say “I’ll do 45 minutes on the treadmill, Random incline set at Level 5, cycling between 4 minutes walking and 1 minute jogging.”  Not only does it help the time go by, but it also takes the mental energy out of it (see #2).
  4. Get enough sleep.  This one may seem obvious, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to get out of bed if I know I’ve gotten a full night’s sleep.  I took a weekend and noted the times I went to bed and woke up “naturally”, and came up with my magic number.  I personally like to get eight to nine hours of sleep; try it out for yourself and see what your natural cycle is.  It might mean going to bed at nine o’clock, but if it means living a healthier life, who cares?
  5. Remember that it’s YOUR time.  This is the Ultimate Hook.  The Super-Motivator.  Unfortunately, it takes a couple of weeks for the realization to kick in: Your time at the gym is just that – yours.  You don’t have to take your spouse’s opinion, or your kids’ needs, or your boss’s demands into account.  You can make it whatever you want it to be.  Do you like lifting weights while listening to The Carpenter’s greatest hits?  Then DO IT!  Do you secretly pretend that you’re Beyoncé while listening to her latest album on your iPod?  Hey, ME TOO!  No one is going to judge you, because everyone is in their own little world at the gym, whether it’s channeling Beyoncé, visualizing the perfect beach body, or picturing their evil boss’s face while they pummel a punching bag.  It’s YOUR time!

 

If you’ve been contemplating trying out a pre-dawn workout routine, or you’ve tried it before and haven’t been able to stick to it, I hope the tips and tricks listed above have helped you.  In the end, it’s all about figuring out what works for you.

Whether it’s midnight, midday, mid-afternoon, or somewhere in between, as long as you’re moving – and loving it – that’s all that matters.

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Those are some awesome tips for working out in the morning.

What is your favorite workout time? How do you hold yourself accountable?

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