by Michelle Wilkinson

Created on: June 01, 2010   Last Updated: September 19, 2010

While most people want to get fitter, not everyone can be bothered to put in the effort, often citing lack of time. If you’re one of these people who struggles to find time to fit a workout into your long day you could benefit from altering your view of what constitutes a workout. You may have in your head the notion that you have to join a gym or start attending aerobics classes to get a suitable amount of exercise, but this clearly isn’t the case. What you really need to do is make sure that exercise becomes such an essential part of your day that you can’t imagine not doing it.

Clearly, then, it’s worth re-evaluating the role that walking can play in helping you keep fit. You may not think of walking as ‘proper’ exercise because, unless you’re extremely unfit, you don’t usually puff, pant and sweat. However, you don’t have to turn as red as a beetroot and have sweat streaming down your face to get an effective cardiovascular workout. Of course, if you feel that a stroll isn’t enough for you, you could always increase your tempo and take more challenging route, anyway.

Walking is definitely something you should consider doing more of, as it isn’t too hard to fit into your day, especially if you opt to leave the car at home in order to walk instead. Walking is something you can do with your children and partner, so that you don’t have to miss out on any family time. It isn’t particularly difficult to walk, as you don’t need any specialist training or particular items of clothing and so you can just start doing it without putting having to formulate a plan. This is clearly a positive thing if you don’t have much time as it is.

Indeed, it’s probably better to just get on with doing exercise than to make grand plans about going to the gym every day so you can get fitter and tone-up, if this isn’t feasible in your day-to-day life. Not everyone has the time to workout for two hours a day and so you have to look for ways to incorporate any kind of exercise you can into your schedule wherever and whenever you can. You certainly don’t have to sign up to a gym or join any sports clubs if you don’t have the time or inclination and so your main priority has to be finding a form of exercise you can do on a regular basis, whether this involves walking or some other kind of activity.

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