colinchamp June 10, 2020 7 Comments

“There is never any time!”

As one of the most common responses I get when advising people to cook their food, eat a healthier diet, exercise, or spend more time outside (all are invariable components of a healthier lifestyle), it never ceases to remind me of Jessie Spano on Saved By the Bell and her famous freak out. Jessie was taking caffeine pills to keep up at school and with her array of extracurricular activities, and it all came crashing down when the pressure became unbearably large. She eventually lost it, repeating and shouting “time, there is never any time!” She eventually began singing the Pointer Sisters while Zack embraced her. “I’m so excited. I’m so excited. I’m so…scared.” While the episode was likely meant to provide a lesson to the viewers – don’t do drugs (or caffeine pills) – it mostly led to satire and to this day still gets made fun of on the regular for the overacting and awkwardness.

Now I am not making fun of the premise, but the episode was pretty high up there on the unintentionally hilarious scale, especially when she starts singing the Pointer Sisters:

All jokes aside, the fact that, as a physician, I hear the similar response that “there is never any time” so often lends credence to the fact that it is indeed a serious issue for many people that are attempting to follow a healthier lifestyle, and unlike the Saved by the Bell episode, should be taken a bit more seriously. There is only so much time in the day, and clearly, we struggle to make health fit into the equation. Perhaps simply prioritizing is the first recommendation for those of us struggling, along with a healthy dose of time management, and not turning to caffeine pills like Jessie Spano.

However, that recommendation is clearly easier said than done. Instead, it seems more plausible that we need a complete overhaul of our priorities. All of our priorities. And we need to put ourselves in a position where we can achieve victory in our attempt to prioritize, even if it means admitting that we are not that disciplined and may need to treat ourselves as such.

The Home and Health Paradox

A great example of this societal push to put ourselves into positions of failure is the driving/large home paradox. For example, did you succumb to the suburban sprawl experiment and feed into the fodder that told you that you deserve to live in a several thousand square foot house with a big yard in the middle of nowhere, yet you find yourself driving an hour (or even hours) to and from work each day? Is it impossible for you to walk in your local neighborhood since there are no sidewalks and only high-speed roads to push traffic through to the cluster of local strip malls and fast food chains? Does even getting to the gym add more hours onto your day? This seems like the perfect recipe to derail your efforts to follow a healthy lifestyle…

Perhaps this view of where you should live needs to be adjusted – remember, think complete overhaul here. And don’t worry, you aren’t alone. I am only 7 minutes from work, but we are completely unable to walk or bike anywhere as we live off of a four-lane road with no sidewalks where people drive about 65 miles per hour while texting. There are opportunities to walk in the neighborhoods across the street, but when crossing the road, I have to pick up my dog and run with her, otherwise we won’t make it across alive. Our neighborhood, like many in the US, was clearly made without any consideration of living human beings in mind, but rather how many (shoddily constructed) houses can be jammed into an area, all for the profit of a few investors and construction companies.

So, we are moving to a place where everything is within walking distance. We questioned the suburban sprawl experiment and being constantly told that we would be happier with a large house or yard (i.e. having to drive everywhere) made us realize just how important access and the ability to walk places is to us. And, we aren’t just talking about nightly strolls. We are talking about walking to work, the grocery store, farmers’ markets, and coffee shops. This ensures we will walk for both pleasure and utility. When being forced to travel somewhere simply to take a walk (i.e. walking becomes a chore), we are again set up for failure, and the only solution is to move. And no, this does not mean you must move to an urban or city environment, there are plenty of towns and communities with walking access to parks, stores, farmers’ markets, and local gyms.

“A good walk fixes everything.”

Additionally, did your expensive car or house leave you spending exorbitant amounts of time maintaining them? This post-purchase time sink is rarely considered nowadays, as we feel as though we deserve these unnecessary items. Consider the tradeoffs, consider why you made the purchase in the first place, and consider if it actually made you any happier or merely unable to afford other necessities (both from financial debt and time debt). The item, which likely promised conveniencism may have led to the opposite. Did the cost leave you unable to purchase a nice set of weights? You get the point, but these decisions have rippling effects when it comes to our health.

Time Debt

The next major impasse that we approach in a series of roadblocks to our health is time. (Yes, I hear you Jessie, there is never any time). There are only 24 hours in a day, and 8 of those should be dedicated to sleep. Work usually eats up another 8-10 or even 12. That leaves about 4-8 hours per day during the week to spend time with family, cook, finish the necessities, and still have time to exercise. This, of course, assumes you were unable to be active during the day, did not walk to or from work, and that spending time with family excludes exercise, walking, outside activities, or cooking and eating with family (again, priorities, priorities). If your week is unfortunately and absolutely full of time at work, then you may have to focus on the weekends, where time is much more abundant.

Much like the consideration with indebtedness from a large house and expensive car, how often during the week, month, or year do you spend excessive amounts of time on things that are neither necessary nor productive, and often counterproductive? How often do you spend your time frivolously, going into time debt?

What I would say to everyone out there that feels like Jessie Spano when it comes to there never being enough time dedicated to our health is to prepare for an overhaul, because you desperately need it.

*Building things, teaching others, drawing, doing seasonal activities, etc.

Step 1: Analyze your day:

What do you spend the most time doing?

Most of us would answer “work” here.

However, what do you spend the most time doing when you are home? Do you spend it outside, active, walking, at the gym, and/or with family? Do you watch television? Do you still have cable (ask yourself why if so)? How much time do you spend online?

Nothing cannibalizes a night’s worth of time for cooking, exercising, socializing, walking and being outside like television, social media and reading the outrage machine known as the news. I unfortunately know this from experience and, like most of us, learned the hard way. We could argue that simply watching or reading the media and news is bad for our health, but if you can’t live without these promiscuous time sinks in your life, an effective way of managing is to engage in them while you exercise. Put a TV in your garage while lifting weights or play podcasts while gardening. I like to do this with audio books while gardening or taking care of chores around the house.

As a side note, I have a 6-month-old. She likes 90’s R+B (obviously, who doesn’t). So, I put her in her Baby Bjorn chair and blast 90s R+B and Major Lazer while I work out in the garage. She loves it as she bounces and dances. Additionally, she sees from a young age the importance of physical activity (and yes, I cycle between kissing her and trap bar dead-lifting like any self-respecting macho father and she loves it). It also frees up time for mom to take care of her work as well.

Aurelia doing baby planks since she is trying to be more active like mom and dad.

Take time to analyze your day, and just as I did, you’ll realize how much time is misallocated or applied to things that are sedentary, non-stimulating, or pathetically mindless. It still frustrates me to this day how much time I wasted in front of the television or on anger-inducing and mindless news articles. It is important to have mindless time, but there are more creative and rewarding avenues to this than zoning out in front of the screen on our iPad or television.

Step 2: Integrate Healthy and Rewarding Behaviors Like Exercise and Cooking or Fail Miserably

The surest path to success is to integrate healthy behaviors into your day. Simple things like taking a walk every day during lunch or walking to work can add large amounts of activity to your day, not to mention mental benefits and increased productivity at work so you can leave earlier after an efficient day. Taking a walk during my research days at work never fails to improve my effort and creativity as I write manuscripts and grants. I used to play an intense all out couple games of ping pong at lunch that would equate to 2-4 miles of activity (and often broken paddles thrown off the wall).

Nowadays, I place paper sheets on my office floor and do pushups while documenting in patients’ chart. I have kettle bells in my office as well and do swings, goblet squats, jumping goblet squats, and multiple other lifts throughout the day. This makes the absolutely worst part of my job (typing into charts for hours on end) more bearable and actually productive. By the end of some days, I have gotten a whole workout in by while making documentation a little less painful.

“Writer’s block, stressed at work, argument with your spouse? A 30-minute walk fixes everything.”

We manage a garden with our daughter. Well, she kind of just watches us manage the garden. When she is having outbursts or crying, we walk her around in it, letting her smell the herbs and watch the bees – the perfect antidote to stop her crying. I listen to my Italian lessons and books while out there or while cooking. A healthy lifestyle is not just integrated into all our activities, it is the activities. Even when we enjoy a delicious glass of red wine, we are relaxing, socializing, and eating a home cooked meal or some cheese made from raw, grass-fed milk that we researched (like our olive oil, chocolate, and basically all foods and purchases). The integration does not start or stop, it simply is. This integration does not include apps or trendy diets to keep us on track. This integration is us.

Step 3: Live off of the Dividends 

At this point, you basically have been health cost averaging. It has become part of your life. You enjoy your activities, and your activities promote health. The circle repeats and repeats, producing benefits along the way, making you healthier on the inside and out. You find pleasure in activities that once had to be planned or dreaded. You no longer schedule exercise or healthy activities, as you crave them as part of your day. You no longer sit on the couch, watching TV while thinking when can/should I workout today. You canceled your cable. During the week, much of your exercise has taken place before you get home. During the weekend, you step it up with heavy weights and compound movements in the garage.

You walk more and loath driving. You have realized what a drain social media and the news are. You notice how unhappy it makes those around you as they gossip and talk about people instead of ideas. You have realized it serves primarily to promote outrage and was a major cause for your internal unrest. Eliminating it has freed up more than just time to do things that are fruitful. You have more arete and ikigai. You are playing the infinite game.

We all have time to exercise, eat healthy foods, and live a healthy lifestyle. Some of us more than others. Most of us need to reassess our priorities, especially before we use the Jessie Spano excuse.

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