The Great Balancing Act

Yesterday in our bootcamp classes we worked on our balance. It’s a lot harder to stand on one foot with our eyes closed than we may have thought!

I thought about how that “balance practice” is a metaphor for our lives. Life is full of balancing acts. We juggle family, work, duties around the home, extra activities like hobbies, and getting together with friends. When do we fit training in? Is there a way to do it all?

Your health and fitness is important to us, but it needs to be more important to you. Putting training aside, eating foods that are empty in value (or “not a food group” at Yvonn puts it) are damaging your chances of reaching those goals. Seek to balance life out. Focus on your goals. Too often we put aside what we know to be right in health because it is just too hard to do it all. Or is it?

Balance in life is conquered with planning. After all we plan for things like vacations – we know in advance where we are going, what we will be doing there, and how we will get to each point of interest. We also plan out each week. We know when we have to be at work, when our kids have soccer games, and whose turn it is to feed the dog.

Break that down to daily planning as well.  When are you going to get up? What are you going to do first, second, and third? Do you waste time standing in front of the closet staring into the clean laundry hanging there wondering what you will wear? Do you do the same thing with the fridge? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to take some of that wasted time and make some plans in order to accomplish it all?

Take 10-20 minutes each Sunday and plan out the week’s menu. Include all your meals and snacks. Remember the balancing act? Would you rather stand in front of the fridge trying to grab something – anything – in order to feed your hungry stomach or would you like to reach inside each morning for the container that holds your breakfast and be out the door? What a sense of accomplishment, when you know you’ve attained your goals. You’ve found that balance between utter confusion leading to unhealthy choices, and the calmness that comes from knowing you made great choices in order to eat for a healthy life.

Take that principle to your training schedule. Are you always thinking of what needs to be done first? Does that include your training? Does it get shifted to last on the “To Do” list and usually remain undone at the end of the day? You need to seek balance. Your health and your fitness can’t be bottom of the list if you want to reach your goals. If one of your reasons for becoming/staying healthy is for your family, is there balance if they become the reason you can’t make it to class? Plan your training schedule like it is an appointment with your doctor. You have to be there. Looking at it any other way is less than optimal.

Planning is the key to a balanced life.  We plan for so many areas of our life until that planning is a habit. We rarely even realize we are planning any more. To obtain balance in your eating and personal training you have to plan. Don’t try to juggle life and let some of the balls fall on the ground. Plan, practice and succeed.

Thanks for letting us be a part of your life,

Nancy