Excuses {Guest Post}

I hope you all have been enjoying the guest posts this week. Today, I’m happy to have Carrie from FamilyFitnessFood take over the blog. Carrie is a wife and mother who lives in Southern California and she blogs about her journey towards a healthy relationship with family, fitness and food – a topic that I know a lot of us struggle to find balance with.

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Hi everyone! Thank you so much to Christine for allowing me to share some thoughts with all of you. I’m Carrie – I’m a mom who took charge of my health 3 years ago. I lost weight, changed my life and want to share my inspiration with whoever wants to listen on my blog FamilyFitnessFood or on Twitter @CarrieSinCA.

What I wanted to share with everyone today are my thoughts on excuses and how to turn excuses into good habits. You know the “Oh, I’m too busy to go to the gym,” or the “I’m so busy, my only dinner options are fast food.” Then, there’s “I hate to exercise, so I’m just going to sit here and eat ice cream and watch TV.”

Ok, so maybe that last one is a little overboard.

But, seriously – when was the last time you honestly listened to an excuse you were giving for not taking care of yourself? Have you truly heard the stuff that you’ve said?

We are all busy people. What I’ve learned over the last few years that I try to remind myself when I hear an “I’m too busy” excuse about working out creeping up is two things: 1) I feel so much better after I work out – I have more energy and feel like I can focus on my family, and 2) I am more likely to workout if it’s doing something that is fun.

If you poke around the internet for workout motivation, no doubt you’ll come across the saying that no one ever regrets a workout. I can’t tell you how true that one is. Here’s the secret: it doesn’t have to be 2 hours or even 1 hour of working out. It needs to get your heart pumping and can be as little as 30 minutes.

And here’s the key – make it fun! Personally, I’m not a swimmer. So, you aren’t going to find me going to the pool to swim laps for my workout. If someone told me to go swimming, I would dread it and come up with every excuse in the book to not go.

Over the last few years, I’ve discovered a love for running. That’s my go to workout. I plan at least 3 days of running during my week and while it’s never easy, I really enjoy the effort and the endorphins when I’m done. They’ve got me hooked and I keep coming back for more.

However, I didn’t start out loving running. How I started to work exercise into my days was by going for a walk with a friend. We’d walk and talk and enjoy the sunshine. I think we started by walking 40 minutes. Then, it went to an hour. Then, we changed up our route so we’d walk a hilly neighborhood. It was fun, I looked forward to it.

I still enjoy going for a walk. I enjoy mixing up my workouts. I’ve reached a point in my active life that I workout almost every day. Many of the days, it’s a 20 minute home workout. I wake up in the morning and assume that exercise is part of my day. There are days where I pull out my weights and resistance bands and get in a little sweat while watching tv at night because that’s all I could find time to do. But, it feels great to get it done and it keeps me coming back for more.

So, that’s my advice – start small, make it fun and think about how good you feel when you’re done. Your body will thank you. And you’ll find yourself without any excuses for taking care of you.

You can find Carrie here:

• On her blog: FamilyFoodFitness
• Twitter (@CarrieSinCA)
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FamilyFitnessFoodBlog
• Pinterest (@carrieskoll)

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Thanks Carrie! It’s so easy to let our excuses get the best of us. 

Do you find that you let your excuses get the best of you? What’s your most common excuse for not exercising or doing something that you should do?

*** P.S. Don’t forget!! Today’s the last day to enter for a chance to win a pair of Mizuno running shoes! Giveaway is open until midnight EST TONIGHT!! ***