Wake Up For A Fitness Challenge!
“Well, hello Spring!”
While is Australia, I re-discovered how much I loved working out in the morning. When I returned home, I realized how much I hated working out while it was still dark out and freezing.
Now that warm weather (before 9 am) has arrived, I’ve decided to make it my goal to workout before I begin work. This is a difficult task for me to adjust to because I find I am not able to push myself as hard in the AM, leaving me feel unaccomplished at the end. I am determined to change my ways.
Working out in the morning has a variety of benefits:
- Less likely to skip out on exercise due to unanticipated events
- Fire’s up your metabolism for the rest of the day
- More productive mornings
- Fresh start that promotes healthy decisions the rest of the day
How to start to love morning exercise:
- Set an alarm, and get up when it goes off. No snooze!
- Drink a tall glass of water and wash your face too.
- Lay out clothes the night before and put them on right away.
- Have a 1/2 a banana.
- Leave the house and start walking, yes I said walk.
At first, I didn’t run for about 2 weeks. I just walked for 30 minutes. I would walk to my favorite coffee shop on Newbury Street, The Wired Puppy, get a small espresso macchiato and walk back while listening to Matty in the Morning (a local radio show on KISS 108).
Then one day, I had enough energy that I wanted to start running. I began running 1 minute intervals. Run 1 minute, walk 1 minute. After a few days of this, I ran my 5K loop around the Charles river. I was sweaty and felt great.
Today, I didn’t run the entire 35 minutes but I wore a heart rate monitor and burned 330 calories, the equivalent to running the entire time. I’m going to challenge myself to wake up for a morning jog 2x a week for the month of May. Summer starts in just 6 weeks after all.
Do you find that you can workout just as hard in the morning as in the afternoon or are you like me, and find it difficult to push yourself early?
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