Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I found this motivational poster on MotiveWeight a while ago.

It reads:

Every day has 1440 minutes. Be active for 30.

I always forget that when I’m procrastinating my exercise. It’s only 30 minutes and heck, ten of those, I can use for a warm up and cool down. I’ve written about this way back in 2005:

• Starling Fitness – Less Than An Episode of Gilligan’s Island

Back then, I said:

Why do I tell myself, “Less than an episode of Gilligan’s Island?” Why do I find that phrase inspiring? When I was a kid, I loved the show and it always felt like it ended far too soon. I realized commercials took up a third of its time, so each episode was really only about twenty minutes. It was motivational to me. Twenty minutes is short. It will fly by quickly.

It’s only thirty minutes out of 1440. That’s a slim 2% of your day. If you are unwilling to donate 2% of your day to your health and fitness, then you need to readjust your priorities.

But I hear you naysayers out there. You’re screaming at me all the excuses that people have been using for years.

• “I have to sleep!”
• “I have to work a full-time job!”
• “I have kids to take care of and meals to cook.”

I’ll give you sleep and work. That takes your total minutes from 1440 down to 480 minutes. I’ll even give you an extra hour for commuting. That leaves you with 7 hours, or 420 minutes. You’d think that would change things drastically, right? Your percentage of the day devoted to exercise is now, like 30%, right?

NOPE.

30 minutes is only 7% of your newly revised 420 minutes. SEVEN PERCENT!!! All you have to do to gain all the psychological and physical benefits of exercise only requires you to “sacrifice” 7% of your time. That gives you plenty more time to play with your children, shower, cook meals and watch all the TV you could ever want to watch.

Quit listening to the lazy voice inside your head who tells you that you don’t have time to exercise. It’s a liar. You can make room for 30 minutes out of the 420 minutes of free time you have each day. You MUST make room for 30 minutes of exercise every day. Your life LITERALLY depends on it. Start acting like it.