No Excuses!

An article in the Montreal Gazette written by columnist Jill Barker called Turn Excuses Into Action talks about the main excuses that couch potatoes use to get out of exercising. 

One of the biggest excuses, especially for busy moms, is that they are already wound up from chasing after kids all day.  This can no longer be an excuse. For one thing chasing kids all day can be stressful. The purpose of exercise is to release stress, not create more of it. 

If you need to be with your kids all of the time then consider exercising with them.  Play games on your front lawn or in the park with them such as ball, Frisbee or hide and seek. You can also do things like play hula hoop with your kids, hop scotch or jump rope. Yet another thing you can do is just take your kids out for an exercise session based on simple workouts. Do ten sets of simple exercises as a group.   Other athletic activities that kid love are hiking, swimming and climbing. 

Sometimes it is not the kids that are in your way when it comes to getting an exercise program off the ground. An excuse that a lot of people use is 'I'm not a gym person.' You don't have to go to a. Biking, canoeing, swimming, running or even taking a walk in the park count as legitimate forms of exercise.  This way nobody is staring at your body or if you are wearing the latest in spandex fashions.  And unless your kid is a teenager he or she is probably not going to care what you are wearing if you decide to go through a jog in the park with them. 

One of the main excuses that people use is 'I am not in good enough shape to exercise.' This of course is a self-defeating excuse with no way out of the dilemma.   This includes people that feel too fatigued or too stressed to exercise. Unfortunately the more you lie around the more you are just going to want to lie around. This is a vicious circle because it can lead to depression, obesity and other problems.

 Once you feel that you are getting out of shape the best thing to do is nip the problem in the bud before it gets worse. For one thing you are setting a bad example for the kids by lying around all dyad. Barker suggests that the only way out of this one is to keep your goals attainable and start out slowly.  If you are so fatigued that you can't do much more than walk around the block then by all means get up off the couch and walk around the block.  Ask one of your kids to take that walk around the block with you. Every little bit you do will help. In other words, get off the couch and exercise anyway!