How much time do you spend arguing with yourself about whether to exercise?  I ask this because a client came one morning and said, “You know, I wouldn’t get up and workout if I didn’t have to come here for an appointment.  I would just lie in bed and argue with myself…or I argue with my warm, comfy bed and guess who wins?”

Bed vs. early morning workout…hmmm.

Most of us are so overwhelmed with too many tasks that, when faced with a scheduling decision and all that entails – “I could get up and workout but then I would have to get up an hour early and are my workout clothes clean?  Where are my shoes?  What workout will I do and how much time will I need to get ready for work?  And…this is too hard.  Never mind.” – we often just give up and promise ourselves we’ll do it later.

When does later actually happen?  For me?  It’s usually never once I’ve gotten that far in the argument.

What’s interesting about exercise is that you can do it anytime, anywhere without special equipment or a lot of time or a ton of sweat or even a lot of pain.  For example, if you were to stand up and sit down 15 times, that would be an ‘exercise.’  If you were to get up and walk across the room and then march up and down a staircase for 5 minutes, that, too, is ‘exercise.’  We convince ourselves we need an hour, we need sweat, we need pain and, yes, you do need to work hard if you want to change your body. But, sometimes?  It’s just about doing something.

So, if you’ve been putting it off, now’s the time to just do it.  Try one or more of these seated yoga exercises or pick 2-4 moves from this list of body weight exercises and do 15 reps of each of them. Or, just take a walk. Sometimes it really is that simple.