Do you sit at your desk all day?
As with most people, when you either have your own business or work in an office, there are days when you sit for hours on end without moving research shows when sitting for long periods can cause damage to our health. For example, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, to name but a few.
In this week’s Pilates for Busy People Weekly Show I chat to Janine, a fellow Small Business Owner. What I love about this chat with Janine that she has a great routine already set up in the morning and I love some of the ideas and logic which she uses to bring movement into her day.
What does a normal day look like for you?
“Well I rise just after seven, have breakfast with the kids take them to school. So that’s my first bit of exercise is not far it’s a 2-minute walk there, 2- minutes’ walk back. Sometimes start the day with a little five-minute meditation. I also as we’re talking exercise, do more in my morning routine, some push ups and sit ups every day, every single day without fail. ”
What made you start doing this routine?
“I think I have this feeling that I knew I needed to do something. In the past before I had kids and when I was working in a city job, I would go to the gym three or four times a week for an hour at a time. Going on the cross trainer or do body pump class or something. That was fine. It worked for me then. Then I had the kids and fell out of that routine. When my youngest got to about one or two years old I thought let’s get back into it, I used to really enjoy it. I tried to get back into it but it just didn’t seem to fit with my life and I didn’t enjoy it as much.”
Why do you think you didn’t enjoy the gym as much?
“When you go to the gym for an hour that takes too much out of your life. I had to rely on my husband getting back to look after the kids. It just seemed like a hassle.
Once the kids were at nursery school I thought about taking an hour out, but it’s half an hour to get there and get changed then that hour in the gym, another half an hour to get back and get back into it, before you know it half the day is gone. I just can’t do that. I don’t want to do it”
You started to do Push ups and sit ups, why was that?
“I thought if I’m not going back to the Gym, I need to do something. I thought, I’m going to stop thinking about that for now I’ll do something little and often and I’ve come across this theme amongst all different sorts of people and mindset business coaches, in the context of exercise as well just little and often is better than never at all.”
“I started off thinking why don’t I try and do that first? I was probably only doing five push ups to start with, I can manage to do 30 push ups now you know! I started in November, I thought I can manage to do five push ups. I’ll just do five push ups per day. And I did it. When they became easy, I thought I need to go on and I do”
Was it hard to do at the start?
“I think so I think it’s you, you have this feeling you’re doing something for yourself. It’s something very small and positive. And I watched this viral video that was doing the rounds on Facebook of this ex-army bloke who was saying about, make your bed, get up and make your bed and you will have achieved one thing. And at the end of the day, even if it’s been a horrible day, you’ll come home and you will have a lovely made bed and it will remind you that you achieve something in the day. So, for me it’s like making my bed.”
Do you sit a lot in your day?
“Some days I sit a lot and its feels as though my body is melting into the desk! I’ve got a Fitbit. It buzzes every hour to say, “Oh, hello, you’ve got to walk for 20, 250 steps”. So sometimes I do keep to that. And I do feel better. When I do that, you know, and you do 250 Steps.
So, another thing I’ve been doing since January is making sure that I do at least 10,000 steps a day and doing little bits every hour helps”
I hope some of the routines that Janine has built into her life have you given you ideas or motivation that you too can do this as well.
We know sitting for long periods is bad for us, just think how long you actually sit in your day, think when you can add some movement into it and then get up and move.
