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When you’ve committed to living a healthier lifestyle, it may be difficult to find balance.  Eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly often conflicts with social obligations, work deadlines, and family matters.  How do you make time for yourself, meet your obligations, and stay sane all at the same time?  You might find yourself falling into bed later than intended, exhausted, your mind racing, trying to figure out how you’ll get everything done again in the morning.  If this is happening to you, it may be time to add balance to your life to even everything out and make your healthy lifestyle feel easier.

• Balance is a practice. You already know that exercise is not a short-term solution for a healthier lifestyle, but rather an ongoing progression that you will need to maintain for a longer, healthier life.  Balance is the same way.  If you commit to finding balance, you’ll need to recommit day after day in order to maintain some equilibrium between the different aspects of your life.  Some days that balance may tip in favor of staying late at work, other days downtime with family and friends may take over. Just by keeping the idea of balance in your mind, you might find that like any practice, it gets easier over time.


• Delegate more. Could you free up an hour for exercise if you were able to delegate work obligations or household chores?  Delegating is an art, but when you are able to do it consistently you’ll find that with fewer responsibilities you can do each one better.  Even small tasks take time away from your other priorities and often there’s help available that can give you even just ten or twenty minutes that can be better spent on a priority task.


• Be specific when you state your goals. “I want to work out more,” is a laudable goal, but what does that mean when you look at your calendar each day?  “I want to work out thirty minutes each day,” is a far more specific goal and may help you find thirty minutes in your busy schedule.  The more specifically you can state your goals, the more likely you are to find the time to work towards progress.


• Give yourself a break. If you’re consistently eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly, enjoying a piece of birthday cake won’t derail your plans.  Instead, it might be the break you need to enjoy the balance of your life. Too much rigidity might hold you back from feeling like you are fully enjoying life’s small celebrations. Balance doesn’t mean your diet and exercise is perfect every day, but rather that you allow room for celebrations and treats.  If you listen to your body, you’ll instinctively find that it wants balance, i.e. more sleep some days than others, a more challenging workout when you hit a plateau, and sometimes a slice of birthday cake instead of more rules.