When extolling the virtues of creating rhythm in your home, you might feel that you are being promised many things: peace, tranquility, predictability, happiness. But can having a rhythm make you healthier? Yes, I think it can.
Yesterday, I wrote about scheduling spiritual practices. I do the same with healthy habits and exercise.
Since I was diagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy when the twins were born, I have been on several medications that make weight loss very difficult. Instead of relying on exercises that raise the heart rate (something that’s difficult to do while taking ace inhibitors and beta blockers!) I instead have had to find exercises that isolate and tone specific muscles and muscle groups. Unfortunately, these exercises only work if I actually do them, and I don’t do them if I don’t schedule for them.
Here is how I schedule my exercise:
Before I get showered and dressed in the morning, I do a 15 minute T-TAPP basic plus workout. I love this because it doesn’t take up tons of space and I can get it done fairly quickly. There’s not a set-in-stone time for this; it just depends on what we’re having for breakfast, how long it takes to make, if my kids can serve themselves, etc.
During our morning meeting, around 8:30, we all do 8 Minutes in the Morning together. These are fairly quick and painless, although sometimes I think we spend more time laughing and giggling as we try to exercise with the babies climbing on us or, even more humorous, trying to join in.
After read-aloud, which is after lunch and clean up, around 1:00, we are usually feeling pretty drowsy. Yet there’s still “one more thing after lunch” to get through before quiet time. This is where we bring out the big guns– the 100 workout.
Source
I would still like to work a daily walk in there somewhere. Ideally, I guess this would happen in the morning, but there just doesn’t seem to be time. Maybe a before-bedtime walk?
How do you fit exercise into your daily rhythm?
