I recently posed this challenge to one of my clients, and for her, it worked like a charm. Hey, some of us are motivated by having the ante upped, including yours truly. Do more (exercise) this week than you did the week before.

So here is how it works:

For one week, tally the number of minutes you spend doing physical activity.

1. Record time spent doing cardiovascular activity, such as walking, jogging, swimming, aerobics, and so on.
2. Record the time spent doing other activity, such as gardening, housework, painting a room, or whatever.
3. Record time spent sitting.

Then, create a chart with a weekly goal. For instance, you might list physical activities separately, followed by “household chore” activity, job-related activity, and sedentary activity.

In the next column, record last week’s minutes spent doing those activities and non-activities, then up the ante for this week. A good rule of thumb is to add 2-5% more to each physical activity (if you want to be conservative), or up to 10% of you really want to challenge yourself.
In addition, make one goal to reduce time spent doing sedentary activity, like TV watching.

Create a column for each day of the week and at the end of each day, tally your minutes. On the last day of the week, do a quick tally to see if you will reach your goal. If you are at risk of falling short, see if you can squeeze in extra minutes of activity to help your reach your goal.

Refer to my simple chart here if you need a visual. You might have more activities on your own chart, and be sure to include all 7 days  (i.e, don’t think weekends don’t count, ’cause they do!)

Hopefully, if all goes well, you will see your hard work paying off. Each week, you can create a new goal. Obviously, you can’t add time to your minutes forever, but you could eventually create a goal for, say, adding a new activity, or maintaining max heart rate for a certain number of minutes, and so on. It is a little hard to see the numbers on this chart, but I basically added time to each physical activity, and reduced the time spent in sedentary activity. For example, if I ran 120 mins last week, this week I’d aim for 130 or 140. If I sat and watched TV 200 mins last week, I’d shoot for 180 or less this week. Hopefully this all makes sense.

If you try this, let me know how it goes…
And if you have your own chart that you’d like to share, fire it my way and I’ll post it here on the blog.

Roadblocks, hurdle, obstacle, limitation…call it what you will — at some point in time, you have had to overcome something to reach your fitness or weight loss goal.  A perceived “lack of time” is the most common excuse for not exercising and/or dropping out of an exercise program. In my experience, a perception that there isn’t enough time to exercise is directly related to level of interest in either the activity, or in changing health behavior to the degree necessary to achieve lasting results.

Other barriers to PA commonly listed include:
* Lack of motivation
* Parenting responsibilities
* Lack of energy
* Health problems (older women are more likely to have a chronic health condition, such as arthritis, for example, that limits their participation in some forms of exercise.)
* Lack of financial resources
* Gender stereotyping (women who believe that child rearing and domestic chores are ‘women’s work’ are less likely to take time to exercise – perhaps because they feel guilty taking time out for themselves.)

Overcoming Barriers

Follow these tips for removing your barriers to physical activity:

1. Enlist support in the form of a spouse, friend, neighbor or co-worker. Having others “on your side” will go a long way toward helping you stay motivated and focused on your fitness goals.
2. Learn a new skill. If you find yourself saying, “I’d try that new class, sport, etc., if only I knew how to do it,” then perhaps it is time to enlist the help of an instructor or trainer who can help you learn. In other words, you don’t have to go it alone — there are skilled professionals who can help you learn a new skill, thus increasing your self efficacy for participating in a new activity.
3. Map out your workouts every week. Writing down what you want to accomplish each day, in advance, will increase the likelihood that you’ll stick to your guns and do it.
4. Treat exercise as an important appointment that can’t be negotiated, moved or canceled. You won’t skip brushing your teeth for lack of time, would you?
5. Turn off the TV. Seventeen hours per week are wasted watching television, on average. That is over two hours per day! Could you use just one of those hours for exercise?

These are just a few tips to get you thinking about ways you can get past roadblocks. For more information, visit the CDC page, “Physical Activity for Everyone.”