I’ll only exercise regularly if it’s in my routine, and fitting things into your routine with a two-year-old and a newborn, and a full-time office based job is a challenge. Weight loss without exercise is much more difficult, so I’m trying really hard to include it in my daily routine in sustainable ways.
Moving to Edinburgh has allowed me to start cycling to and from work every day. I spend half the time commuting that I did in Yorkshire, and get a solid 45 minutes of cardio every weekday. That’s not easy to do if you don’t live in a city, and it’s been one of my criteria for where we live for the last four years, so you’ve got to want it.
The benefits of cycling to work are huge; it’s made a huge difference to my success with exercise, weight loss, saved a tonne of money, and has improved my mood significantly. Alongside cycling, I aim to take at least 10k steps each day, which I track using the built in pedometer on my iPhone, in conjuction with Pedometer++, an app which makes it really easy to see how I’m doing today, and how many days long my streak is at the moment. I do a lot more to track my various weight loss exploits, but that’s for a future post.
I’m planning to begin some resistance exercise soon, which will be harder to make routine. The challenge is to fit that in to life at home, since joining a gym would be an incredible waste of money based on how little I would be able to use it. I’ve enjoyed working out at the gym before, but it is expensive for a room full of heavy things.