Do you struggle with motivation to work out?
Or are you tilting toward the other extreme and falling into workout-a-holism?
Whatever your case, if you feel that fitness is causing an unhealthy amount of stress in your life rather than relieving it, this may be the culprit:
Your workout-life balance is out of whack.
Corporate Training?
Workout-life imbalance is a common issue in these modern times because we’re conditioned to work out like we work:
- ⌚️ Following some schedule, you,
- 👟 put on the “appropriate” attire,
- 🏪 head to some temperature-controlled building,
- 🎟 scan yourself in, and,
- 😰 alongside a bunch of other moaners and groaners,
- 👉 do the work someone else tells you to.
Or something along these lines.
This conventional approach works for some people. If you’re one of them, great! But don’t leave this post just yet. Because I think everyone can benefit from regularly recalibrating their workout-life balance.
Here are five fun tips for doing so.
5 Workout-Life Balance Tips
Let’s re-jig classic, cliché work-life balance advice toward enjoying a better workout -life balance.
1. Mix fitness with pleasure.
If working out feels like a job you have to do, find a more fun activity you want to do (e.g., hiking, playing sports, gardening, walking your dog wearing a weight vest).
2. Work out remotely.
Why confine yourself to the stale air of a gym? Work out outside to reap the benefits of stepping onto The Nature Pyramid.
3. Take your workouts home with you.
And everywhere else.
Move as much as possible. Do things the “hard way” (take stairs, carry groceries instead of a cart, carry babies instead of a stroller). Even sleep hard.
4. Join great company.
Surround yourself with co-workout-ers who you enjoy spending time with and who keep you on the right track.
5. Prioritize
You’re not going to be Mr. Olympia or an Olympian, so prioritize becoming an “Old-lympian,” someone who stays fit enough to do fun stuff with their friends deep into old age.
How’s Your Fitness Diet?
Here’s another analogy to round out your perspective on workout-life balance:
Diet.
The “workout like it’s your job” approach is like eating pizza all the time and supplementing with pills, vitamins, and power smoothies to try to be healthy.
A workout-life balance is like eating a natural whole-food diet. The more you make movement an organic part of your everyday life, the less you have to supplement with exercise.
Thought Starters
- 🎒 Born to
runcarry? For a strength and cardio workout that, according to Michael Easter, burns 2-to-3 times the calories of walking with 1/6th the pressure on your knees of running, consider “rucking” – i.e., going for walks with a loaded backpack. - 🧱 Fidget fitness? Mayo Clinic research finds that having no couches to sit on or excessively soft beds to sleep on leads to the constant fidgeting our bodies are designed for, which burns as much as 400 extra calories a day.
- 🧬 Exercise is no substitute. “In the same way supplements should not be the bulk of your diet, exercise should not be the bulk of your movement profile,” writes Katy Bowman, whose book, Move Your DNA, is worth checking out if you’re serious about improving your workout-life balance.
- 🎽 Put on a different identity. “Lazy” is an identity you layer on top of your core personality. If you don’t like how it’s making you look, replace it with something else that fits your fitness objectives better: “Practical”? “Fun-loving”? “Socially responsible”?
- 🧹 Give yourself more credit? Maids told they were already doing lots of exercise in their jobs started being more active while cleaning because “they were already halfway there” and lost weight while doing the same job and same lifestyle. (h/t Switch by Chip and Dan Health.)
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About the author
I'm Chris. Grinding for conventional super success was exhausting, so I zagged. Now, my life's getting better and better—and part of that involves pushing you to work toward the same.
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