I used to be the one dishing out a barrage of “lame” excuses to my friends who regularly encourage me to do some form of exercise to stay fit. For the record, I am not proud at all to have successfully staved these promptings for the longest of time. And it was not only until 3 years ago that I got tilted over the balance and started indulging in both cardio and strength training three times a week.
Having learnt the hard way as to what it means to get healthy, I feel a compelling need to share with one and all the principle of sparing your body just a fraction of your time each week to work out. It’s called “The 1% Rule” because it really only takes up 1% of your time to keep yourself in top shape.
I learnt this ethic from Mike Geary, author of The Truth about Six Pack Abs, who puts it this way: “… if you dedicate only 25 minutes per day, 4 days per week to a good exercise routine, that’s only 100 total minutes per week. Considering that you have 1440 minutes in each day multiplied by 7 days equals 10,080 minutes per week of total time. So now look at those 100 minutes per week dedicated to exercise and divide that into the 10,080 minutes total that you have in a week, and that represents approx 1% of your total time in any given week.”
I am almost sure you haven’t looked at it in this way before, and if you can continue to say after reading the above that you still can’t spare the time, it probably confirms that you have consciously decided to not do anything about it.
You know, if you want to look for excuses and I used to do it all the time, they are a-plenty and some of these include: I’m in horrible shape – well if you don’t want to do anything about it, it won’t get any better; I don’t like it – I don’t like a lot of things like brushing my teeth, waking up early, paying my bills, but I still do them. Exercise is an activity you really can get used to; I’m too tired – trust me, you will feel more energized after you exercise than if you skip it altogether. An endorphin-high is really something to be experienced after a good workout; I’m too busy – I can guarantee you that someone busier than you is working out right now; I’ve got better things to do – isn’t keeping healthy and fit something really worth spending time on?
My “health” awakening came a little late but I figure that it is better late than never. My weight used to be 78kg, it’s now 63kg; office pants used to be size 36, it is now 31; total cholesterol used to be 250, it’s now 180; LDL used to be 160, it’s now 100; HDL used to be 40, now it’s 80; total cholesterol/HDL ratio used to be 3.5, it’s now 2.8.
And all because I chose to spare my body 1% of my time!
Geoff Tan 