Why thinking you’re too busy might be interfering with your weight loss goals.
We hear constantly about the obesity epidemic that is ruining the health of Americans, and lately there has been a lot of chatter about the overwhelming anxiety that is leaving millions of us biting our nails and stressing over everything. Well, somewhere in the midst of our poor health habits and inability to cope with stress there is an innate busyness that is taking over.
Telling someone that you are busy has become a sort of backhanded compliment nowadays. Think about the last time you bumped into a friend while out and about. They ask you how you are or vice versa, and the response is often “oh, so busy” or something to the same effect. It is often said with a smile, because even though you might say you wish you weren’t, most of us are pretty proud to be so chronically busy.
The Business of Busyness
Being busy has somehow worked itself into being part of the American way of life, but it doesn’t have to be. Being busy is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you tell your friends, family members and even co-workers that you are busy often enough, you will eventually be too busy to do much of anything else.
According to economic research, those who make more money feel busier than those who make less. Survey research revealed that on average, someone who works one full-time position in a well-paying field will feel significantly busier than someone who is working three minimum wage positions just to get by. This indicates that being busy is often a social thing, and it is subjective.
If you don’t want to be busy, then the first thing to do is stop telling people that you are! After that, it all comes down to time management and changing your attitude about how you approach your day.
Making Time for What Matters
One of the most common excuses that people deliver when it comes to not being able to lose weight is that their work schedule makes it impossible—they are just too busy. While we are all dealt different cards when it comes to financial and social obligations, there is one common factor we all share: time.
The amount of hours in your day and week match that of everyone else on this planet. When you break it down, we all have 24 hours in a day, and 168 hours in a week. Even if you work more than the average Joe and put in 60 hour work weeks and then sleep eight hours every night (and let’s be honest, both of those numbers are high for most of us), that leaves you with an extra 52 waking hours that are not spent at work!
Exercising for 30 minutes every day only adds up to three and a half hours. When you do the math, chances are there is plenty of time for fun activities in your week, but when you are constantly feeling busy it sure doesn’t feel like it.
If you want to reach your weight loss goals, then maybe it is time to change how you think about your day. You might be surprised how much a difference eliminating the word busy from your vocabulary will do for your medical weight management. When you stop thinking you are busy, you can escape the busyness trap and free up a lot of time to do the things you want to do.