Every Day Fitness!

People always ask me how I find time to fit exercise in my daily schedule. If we are truly honest with ourselves, we have the time -it really is about finding the motivation to exercise. Remember, exercise does not require the latest greatest DVD or Wii fitness product. Find exercise in your regular daily routine.

For instance, today I planted a garden. This is major, I am far from a dirt person, I have no plants in my home and oh yes, I mean soil person. But. My mother had the brilliant idea to plant a garden with my son and has been talking about it with him for months. She is visiting for his birthday and today was planting day.

My mother is unable to be in the sun so I gave her the job of supervising our work. I decided to strap on my Polar training computer because I know that gardening is hard work and sure to burn off some calories. Clearing out the area where the "garden" (I use this term loosely because we have a tomato plant and added some snap peas, marigolds and a couple of carrots to the mix) is located took some work. I had to fight with weeds, rocks and of course Georgia red clay.

Mekhi had the time of his life - dirt, water and a trowel? Heaven for a three year old! Here are the fruits of our effort. For a first attempt I think that we did pretty well and this was more of an exercise to teach Mekhi about the cycle of life, hopefully something grows!

As far as the workout is concerned, after an hour of gardening I burned a formidable 122 calories. I will likely do a formal workout later today but even if I didn't, I'd be happy knowing I burned calories doing a household chore. Think about it, moving that vacuum, going up and down the staircase to do laundry and even chasing kids burns calories. If you have a HRM strap it on when you have a specific task and see how you do or put on your pedometer and see how many steps you take in a given day. You may surprise yourself and challenge yourself for the next time!

You can fit exercise in - every day chores count too!