How to Make Exercise a Habit When You Don’t Have Time
As a certified personal trainer, I hear a lot of fitness goals from my clients. When we begin our relationship, the number one goal I hear is “I want to make exercise a habit but I don’t have time to work out.” Of course, my clients have more specific goals such as losing X amount of weight or improving their cardiovascular health so they can complete their first 5K without huffing and puffing. However, you cannot acheive any fitness goal if you fail to show up to the execise sessions. If you want to run a 5K you need to complete your scheduled cardio and strength workouts to achieve that goal. Completing the 5K will not happen if you miss your workouts. And what is the number one excuse clients have for missing their workouts? Not having enough time.
The perception that there is not enough time to take care of your health is just that - a perception. After reading the previous sentence, you may be tempted to screenshot your packed Google Calendar filled with work appointments, playdates for the kids, work dinners, travel plans, and other family obligations and send me that screenshot as proof of your packed schedule. I get it. We live in a society that prioritizes productivity. A society where being busy denotes success. A society where a single mom may have to work 60 hours a week to simply purchase the essentials.
Before you send me that screenshot, I want to ask you:
How do you measure success?
What do you value most in your life?
What quality of life do you envision yourself having?
I venture to guess that living a healthy life for you and your family is at the top of the list. Now, I’ll ask you a few more questions:
If you are not healthy, how can you complete the many tasks on your Google Calendar?
How can you work to make money?
How can you cart the kids from one thing to the next if you are sick in bed or immobile?
Once you answer those questions, you will find that taking care of your health is not only necessary, it is essential. Unfortunately simply knowing that you have to take care of your health does not automatically change your perception of having enough time to exercise or magically free up time in your schedule for a workout.
In this article, I guide you through the process of removing time as a limiting belief, provide you with research-backed information on the four essential components necessary to make exercise a lifelong habit, and I give you practical tips to make exercise a habit when you don’t have time. I also use real-life examples of successful clients and not-so-successful clients so you can learn from and provide resources for you to begin your new exercise habit.
“I Have No Time To Workout” Is A Limiting Belief
Let us revisit the idea that not having enough time to work out is a perception. The way you perceive your schedule is completely up to you. My role as a coach is not to disagree with your perception of how busy you are or to compare your schedule with another client. My role is to help you find ways to make exercise a habit in whatever capacity you currently have. I will use two real-life examples to demonstrate how your perception of time manifests and impacts your ability to make exercise a habit (A disclaimer: some of the names of the clients have been changed to protect their privacy, while others voluntarily provided photos and information to motivate and inspire others.)
A Successful Client: Kara’s Story
Kara is a single mother of 4 in her late 30’s. She works remotely in the medical field. She works at least 40 hours per week, oftentimes working overtime (60 hours/week) to provide for her children. Kara began as a hybrid virtual and in-person client who committed to working out 5 days/week. For the first 6 months on her weight-loss journey, we met one time/week in person at her apartment complex’s small gym and I programmed her independent workouts for the other 4 days. Her fitness goal was to lose weight and get back into an exercise routine but most importantly she wanted to feel well in her body. She also wanted to complete a 5K. Kara and I were working against health conditions such as severe migraines and medications that cause weight gain. Right from the beginning, Kara demonstrated a positive attitude towards being active and understood that physical activity was the methodology necessary to reach her weight loss goals.
Having an appointment with a trainer be it in-person or a virtual session is a great way to increase accountability, which is why we started with at least one in-person session per week. Because Kara was consistently showing up for our scheduled workout, we decided she no longer needed the appointment, plus her form greatly improved over time. As the year progressed, she did not see the physical changes she desired even though she was consistently showing up to workouts and she was pushing herself. She did, however, complete not only one 5K race but several! Despite not seeing drastic results in her first year, Kara kept going. She did not give up on her workouts.
The following year the physical changes were drastically noticeable (see photo 1) ! She ended up losing 31 lbs. and began feeling better in her body. To this day, she is an online client who rarely misses a workout even when life’s stressors come up such as losing her job temporarily. She eventually found a new job and continues to make strides to surpass her fitness goals and even has her kids working out with her at the park sometimes. It is safe to say that she made exercise a lifelong habit despite being a busy, single mom. She is also a great role model for her children because she is modeling healthy practices.
Photo 1: Showing Kara at the start of her journey and 18 months later.
Keep it up, Kara!
A Client Who Needs To Do More Soul Searching: Melissa’s Story
Melissa is in her early 50’s, has no children, and works 3-4 long days per week at a resort. When she is not working at the resort she spends her time working on her online business. Initially, Melissa’s fitness goal was to have a flatter stomach and overall improve her physical aesthetics. Additionally, her doctor advised her that strength training would help her sacroiliac (SI) joint point. Melissa’s weight was in a healthy range for an adult female her age. It is perfectly normal and understandable to have aesthetic goals such as having a flatter stomach or looking better in a bikini. Don’t we all? For Melissa to reach her goals, we met in person 2 times per week and we increased her cardio with walking at least 2 times per week. She was to complete her walks independently.
During our time together, she was resistant to strength training, often questioned if it was good for her, expressed contempt for working out, often complained about having to fit our 2 sessions into her schedule, was defensive when she missed her walks citing her busy schedule, and felt that she was not seeing the aesthetic results she was after fast enough. As a coach, it is my role to hold my clients accountable to reach their goals and facilitate alternatives if things come up. To that end, I suggested home strength workouts to make workouts more accessible for Melissa and improve adherence. Unfortunately, she missed the majority of her home-strength workouts and she cited a lack of time or lack of motivation. During this time she began to lose muscle mass which is typically not a good sign especially as we into our later years. Despite my best efforts to explain the importance of maintaining muscle mass and trying to get Melissa to reframe her mindset towards a more positive, time-abundant way of thinking, we decided it was best to allow a different trainer or service to help her on her journey.
If you identify with Melissa, do not shame yourself for feeling this way. Continue reading to incoporate a mindfulness practice to help you reframe your perception. I also recommend watching this YouTube video about “Why Some People Won’t Stick to New Habits”.
“Why Some People Won’t Stick To New Habits” is a YouTube video made by popular YouTuber Kiana Docherty. Kiana makes well researched videos about the food industry, nutrition, and habits. I highly recommend subscribing to her channel.
How To Change Your Perception
The argument can be made that Kara’s schedule is objectively busier than Melissa’s schedule yet Kara was able to complete the majority of her workouts. However, it is not my place to cast judgment on what I believe constitutes being “too busy to work out.” The point I am trying to make is that perception is everything. Kara and Melissa can both believe they are very busy. It is their right to perceive their lives however they want. I, however, want you to draw attention to that perception and understand that your perception of time can manifest into a limiting belief. Limiting beliefs are negative statements we make to ourselves that are based on our perception. If we constantly perceive and say that we do not have time, it becomes our reality. We are manifesting the limiting belief.
The great thing about perceptions is that they can be changed. To neutralize the limiting belief -“I don’t have time to work out” - and change your perception, I recommend the following mindfulness practice.
First, acknowledge the limiting belief and say it to yourself or write it down in your journal. “I don’t have time to work out.”
Second, forgive yourself for buying into the limiting belief: “I forgive myself for thinking I don’t have time to work out.”
Third, release the limiting belief. “I release the idea that I am time-bound to a schedule that does not allow me to take care of my health.”
By reframing your perception of time, you are on your way to manifest more time to exercise and incorporate it into your schedule. Feel free to use the mindfulness practice above while journaling. You can apply this mindfulness practice to any limiting belief to reframe your thinking. Now that the mind is in the right head space, continue reading to learn how a scientific study determined how to make exercise a habit that sticks. I also provide you with specific ways to save time and get your workouts in.
Make Exercise A Habit
Over the years researchers have conducted many different studies on habit formation. In this post, we focus on a study published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine called “Exercise Habit Formation in New Gym Members: A Longitudinal Study” by Navin Kaushal and Ryan Rhodes published in 2015. In this study, researchers define a habit as “a learned sequence of acts that have become automatic responses to specific cues, and are functional in obtaining certain goals or end-states.” The definition conveys the idea that you automatically exercise because your mind is triggered by cues to exercise and this behavior will lead to your fitness or health goals. The study then identifies four components to successfully create a lifelong habit. The four components are reward, consistency, environmental cues, and low-behavioral complexity. In the following sections, I explain each of the four components and provide practical ways you can ensure the implementation of each so you can develop an exercise habit. I also provide time-saving hacks to complement your new time-abundant mindset.
Component 1: Reward
In the article published by the Journal of Behavioral Medicine and in countless other studies, intrinsic motivation as a reward for your exercise behavior is directly related to sticking to that behavior. To put it differently, finding positives about the experience or positive feelings that come up regarding your workout will make you more likely to do it again. This does not mean that you have to love doing a Bulgarian split squat or a burpee, it means that focusing on the part you do enjoy can make you look forward to that feeling. For example, you may hate every minute of your workout but you might find joy in the slight muscle soreness you experience afterward because you feel like your body is getting stronger, or you might enjoy the good night’s sleep you get after a tough workout. While the workout itself is not your favorite thing to do, you are finding other ways the experience is rewarding. This is how you find intrinsic rewards and successfully fulfill one component of four to make exercise a lifelong habit.
Kara & Melissa: Revisited
Now let us revisit Melissa and Kara - the two clients described earlier in this article. Melissa often practiced negative self-talk during our sessions, expressed contempt for exercising, and often doubted if exercise was right for her (exercise is right for everybody, by the way). This is a classic example of someone who is disconnected by the process and has not mentally identified that exercise is a means to obtain her fitness goal of having a slimmer more toned body. Ultimately, she did not find the success she was after in a healthy way. My theory is that we could not get her to view the process as a positive means to an end.
On the other hand, Kara, who did not see drastic changes in her body composition FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR even though she rarely missed a workout, understood that exercise was a means to her goal. Kara preserved and ultimately obtained the results she was after. The best part is that a few years later, she needs less help with accountability and coaching because exercise is a part of her life. She truly made exercise a lifelong habit.
Extrinsic Rewards
One final note on rewarding yourself. Most of the scientific literature touts the importance of finding intrinsic rewards for exercising but I also believe extrinsic rewards can be beneficial in the short term. Think of extrinsic motivators as more superficial rewards such as purchasing a treat for completing an activity.
I recently used extrinsic rewards as a motivator when I ran a trail Marathon in Arizona. It was the hardest marathon I have ever run. Knowing that the training and race would be difficult, I told myself that when I completed the marathon, I could treat myself to a new tattoo of the Arizona roadrunner. I felt like I had to earn that tattoo and it provided some good motivation to complete my long runs during training. Other examples of extrinsic motivators could be purchasing a new workout outfit if you complete a month of workouts or buying a not-so-healthy coffee drink after attending a Saturday morning workout class. Sparingly, of course. My point is that you can utilize a combination of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators to make exercise a habit.
Fresh tattoo of the Arizona Roadrunner.
A running companion I came across several times while training for the Arizona Trail marathon.
Component 2: Consistency
You have your mindset ready, and you understand the importance of intrinsically rewarding your exercise habit, now the question is, “How long and how many workouts do you need to complete to make exercise a habit?” It is very difficult to tell how long it will take someone to start a new habit and stick with it. If you Google this question right now, you will find many different answers from reputable sources. For our purposes, let us revisit the study “Exercise Habit Formation in New Gym Members: A Longitudinal Study” which concluded that “participants who exercise for at least four bouts per week for 6 weeks successfully established an exercise habit.” The study was conducted over 12 weeks and found that consistency in the time of day and schedule improves the likelihood that participants establish an exercise habit. For example, if participants regularly exercised at the same time of day every week, they are more likely to stick with it.
Habit formation is interesting because it’s one of those things that the more you do it the more you do it. That was not a typo. Habit affects behavioral repetition and that repetition strengthens the habit. If you think about the previous statement then it becomes clear why it is not only very difficult to start a new habit but also to break a habit.
Planning
We established that 4 days per week for at least 6 weeks is the sweet spot amount of time most people need to establish exercise as a habit. We also know that consistency in the time of day and day of the week that the workouts are completed can increase the likelihood that an individual sticks to their exercise routine. It appears that planning is a key aspect of fulfilling the “consistency component” in making exercise a habit. At this time, I bet you’re itching to email me the screenshot of your jam-packed Google calendar to show me that you do not have time to be consistent. Your skin might even crawl at thinking of sitting in front of your calendar to pencil in your workouts. This is where I come in for my clients - especially my virtual clients.
45-Day Challenge: Make Exercise a Habit
To save you time, I developed an online coaching program rooted in Functional Training that I call the “Holistic 45-Day Challenge.” The program is based on the research published by the Journal of Behavioral Medicine. During our time together, we discuss how and when you will complete your workouts in a virtual call and I schedule them for you. I hold you accountable to complete the workouts on the days you committed to working out. By having me as your coach, I am taking out the planning guesswork for your workouts. During your busy day-to-day life, you simply have to open the Exhalo Fortis App and complete the assigned workout or cardio activity. The planning is done for you thus saving you time and helping you develop an exercise habit. Sign up for the challenge and start making exercise a habit that will stick!
6 weeks 4x/week 45-days
What’s Included?
5 Weekly 50-Minute Live sessions with a certified personal trainer/certified yoga teacher
Custom workout plan, tailor-made for your ability level.
Free Access to yogaStrength Saturdays 9AM MST (virtual class)
Scheduled workouts to fit your busy life.
Accountability check-in via the ExhaloFortis App
Nutrition Initial Consultation + Follow Up Consult
Equipment Provided: Fabric glute bands + Large round band+Magnetic phone holder included. Have a question about form? Send a video in the ExFo app of you performing the exercise using your magnetic phone holder. Trainer responds with corrections and a video showing proper form. OR skip that exercise and ask during your weekly live training session!
With so many touchpoints, you are FULLY supported. Start here, start now!
Component 3: Environmental Cues
So far we learned how to cultivate a perception of time as being abundant versus scarce and identified two out of the four components necessary to make exercise a habit. The next component to finally make exercise a lifelong habit for you is focused on your environment. According to the study cited in this post, “the environment plays a critical role that can prompt or disrupt automatic behavior . . . Additionally, close proximity to recreation facilities have also been shown to predict behavior which could act partly via ease of access but also via environmental cues.”
Remember that old habits are difficult to break and new habits are difficult to implement, this is why you need to add environmental cues to remind yourself of the new habit you’re trying to implement. For example, if you want to exercise right after work but are not used to going to the gym after work, you can pack a gym bag the night before and place it near the door. Now you have an environmental cue that you have to carry to work and have in your car. The gym bag in the passenger seat serves as a reminder to go to the gym instead of going home. You are disrupting the old habit of going straight home from work and adding a new habit using an environmental cue. It was also very reassuring for me to read that going to a gym that is nearby increases the likelihood that you will work out. I have always championed the nearby gym even when the out-of-the-way gym might be nicer.
Keep reading to learn some hacks on how you can implement environmental cues to make exercise a habit and save you time!
Save Time: Get Fit At Home
I love the gym. I am a trainer, of course, I love the gym. However, I have found that the most accessible and time-saving way for most people to get fit is by working out at home. By working out at home, you cut out the time it takes you to commute to and from the gym, you do not have to plan a special outfit because your dresser is nearby, not that it matters what you look like at the gym but you don’t even have to worry about combing your hair (can’t relate, I’m a baldie)!
It is worth mentioning that the study published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine points out that “ if an individual does not feel comfortable in a particular environment due to the presence of any negative cues (i.e. safety concerns, social physique anxiety, etc.), then the automaticity process would be interrupted”. This means that if for whatever reason you do not feel comfortable at the gym, your brain will not associate the environmental cue properly and could prevent you from integrating your new exercise habit!
Home Workout Provides Environmental Cues: Carol’s Home Workouts
Not only does working out from home save you time, you can customize your home workout space to provide you with the environmental cues you need to help you enjoy the process of working out. For example, I have an online client named Carol who has a workout room in a spare room next to her garage. The spare room was set up mainly by her partner as his workout room and it also housed her Peleton bike. When she began online training, she started using that room and I implemented her Peleton bike in her exercise schedule. The best part is that she added DJ lights for when she is completing her pre-scheduled cycling workouts! Now, she is bopping away in a spare room she rarely used and is meeting her goal of slimming down.
Make it stand out
Photo provided by Carol of her home gym setup.
If don’t have any equipment, you can still get started at home! As an American Council on Exercise (ACE) certified personal trainer and National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) virtual coaching specialist I can develop challenging workouts suitable for ability level with or without equipment. Also, if you are sitting in an idle home gym, that is a true waste! Contact me today so we can dust that equipment off and get you to your fitness goals.
Component 4: Low-Behavioral Complexity
You did it! You made it to the fourth and final component necessary to make exercise a habit and this component is a simple one, literally. The study published in 2015 states that “behaviors that are perceived as complex or have not been sufficiently practiced likely require conscious processes which would consequently prevent automaticity.” We want you to acquire exercise as a lifelong habit so the goal is for exercise to be ingrained into your life without you consciously thinking about it. You automatically just do it. To begin that process, the exercise behavior must be simple. Overly complex workouts or adding a lot of obstacles before exercising can prevent the automation of the exercise habit.
Having some knowledge about exercise and movement increases your knowledge base which reduces the complexity of exercise. For that reason, I am offering you a free, downloadable e-Book that you can access right now. I created this e-Book so you can begin your exercise journey, learn some foundational movements, and start feeling strong in your body. You can access my book here. Additionally, you can access free functional training video tutorials to increase your exercise knowledge.
Home Workouts Reduce Behavioral Complexity
Working out from home can remove many barriers from getting to the workout thus reducing the behavioral complexity. You do not have to leave your house, you do not have to get a gym membership, you do not have to park the car in a packed parking lot, and you do not even have to talk to another person or fight the crowds at the gym. Also, finding ways to meet your health goals in your day-to-day life without making it too complex can be something we develop over time. A perfect example is how I programmed specific days for Carol to get on the Peleton bike she already had or how another virtual client I have (my mom), works with the elderly and she completed her pre-scheduled 30-minute walk during work hours.
Become the Change
I teach a lot of yoga and group fitness classes and train private clients virtually and in person. I talk to so many people about their bodies and their health and fitness goals every day. I think the thing I hear the most that breaks my heart is how many people feel unheard and dismissed by the American healthcare system when it comes to improving their health. Many individuals come to me because they feel defeated or because they simply need some support. I believe that is what I offer my clients and group fitness class participants - support. I acquire as much knowledge as I can so I can support my clients on their wellness journey. That is why I developed the “45-Day Holistic Wellness Challenge,” write articles, create an e-Book and generally make more informative content.
I do my best to be genuine, transparent, and holistic with my approach to fitness. I have seen people change their lives and have watched them become the change they envisioned when they started their journey with me. For that change to occur, you have to begin by believing that you are capable of change. Remember, your perception can manifest into the physical change you desire. Become the change.
Watch the Youtube video in this article, read the study, download my free e-book, purchase the “45-Day Holistic Challenge” or simply comment below any questions. You have time to take care of your health.
Thank you for reading and be well.
