Working (out) for the weekend

It's Friday afternoon and all quiet on the home front. The two babies are napping, for the time being, and I've just finished up workout #2 for the day--Insanity Max Interval Plyo (INSANE!!! as you might imagine)--and workout #8 for the week. Yeah, I might be crazy, but I decided to kick it into high gear and try to blast away this stubborn "baby" fat--I'm still blaming the baby... nearly 10 months later.

The real benefit of two workouts a day is to actually give me some "free" time on the weekends--the extra calorie burn is just an added bonus. I cram them in during the week so I can't make excuses for myself on the weekend. "I don't have time." "I'm too tired." Blah, blah, blah... I hate excuses.

Too many times we let excuses govern our actions. You can't join a gym because it's too expensive. You can't get outside and walk because it's too boring. You can't commit 30 minutes a day, three days a week because you just don't have time. Seriously, people? Are we all that busy?

I like to look to my husband as my role model when it comes to losing the excuses and just getting stuff done. His alarm goes off every weekday at 3:45 a.m. Granted, some mornings it continues to go off until 4:15. But for the most part, he is out of the house and at the gym by 4:15 a.m. After his workout he rides the train for 90 minutes, works his job, and  reverses. And he never complains about being tired or not having enough time to workout. He's a machine and that's one of the reasons I love him.

My point is, do what you can do, when you can do it. If you can spend 15 minutes in the morning jumping rope, you can burn 150 calories. If you can do that again after work, that's a total of 300 extra calories you burned for the day. And a jump rope costs about $10.

There is so much you can do with your body with very little equipment, very little time and no financial investment whatsoever. Walking, running, squats, lunges, burpees, push-ups, pull-ups, triceps dips and virtually any exercise where you move your body through the air at a high speed (i.e. plyometrics) is going to burn energy and energy=calories and calories=fat (at least the excess ones do).

So, the next time you tell yourself that you don't have time to workout and instead sit down at your computer for 15 minutes to "surf the net," remember that you could have burned 150 calories jumping rope... just like the good 'ole days in the school yard.