PERRY BUCHANAN: Finding the time to really live

Recently I was shocked to learn of the sudden death of someone I had just been introduced to by a friend. Because this person had made such a strong impression on me for being so vibrant and full of life, it was even more of a shock. It made me pause and think of my own mortality and how much time we waste on trivial things that keep us from fully enjoying life.

Each of us has 168 hours in a week. How well do you use yours? If we are fortunate enough to live to be 100, how much living have we actually accomplished? If we have balanced lives, which most of us don’t, and we spend eight hours a day sleeping and eight hours a day at a job we don’t really like, we have “lived” only 33 years! If you subtract the time for chores we must do, mundane activities of daily living, and trivial arguments along with other wasted moments, our sands of time are depleting quickly.

A while back, I was talking with a young client in her early 20s about how badly she wanted to lose weight. When I asked her why she wasn’t able to follow her prescribed program we had discussed, her answer surprised me. “I know I would probably lose 20-30 pounds doing this, and the program is very doable, but I just have a serious case of FOMO and am scared that eating healthy and exercising will cause me to miss all the fun stuff.”

FOMO was a new term for me, and made me feel old, since I apparently don’t know the cool kids’ lingo any more. FOMO or “Fear of Missing Out,” is the anxious feeling one gets when they think something better or more exciting is going on somewhere else.

Well, the great irony is that a fear of missing out on something better can make you miss out on all the things you do have going on in your life right now. The result of FOMO is often not truly being involved in any social relationship or experience because you always have one eye peering elsewhere. The last time I went out to eat and glanced around the restaurant, I saw half of the people were glued to their smart phones, and not engaged at all with the person sitting across the table from them.

We all have the same time in a day, but different priorities on how we wish to spend that time. While FOMO can affect any part of your life it is slowly becoming an epidemic in the fitness world. I have come to the conclusion that FOMO is just a new term for information overload. I am all too familiar with procrastination brought on by information overload, which is now even harder to fight in the age of the internet.

Take a quick inventory of your personal behaviors and make sure that FOMO isn’t holding you back. Are you doing everything you can be doing with your current program to maximize your results? Are you working out consistently, eating healthy, and getting proper rest. The basics will be 90 percent of what will be responsible for your success. Resist the temptation to be pulled in all directions with TV infomercials, cool internet videos, and well-meaning friends telling you about some new program that they heard is working magic.

Reframe your thinking. Instead of feeling you’re missing out on all the fun stuff, or keep aimlessly starting new programs, realize you’re missing out on all the benefits to be had by not going to the gym consistently and following a sound program. When you miss a workout its more then just sweat you miss out on.

What can we do with the limited time we have? I certainly don’t have your answer, but I do know we need to enjoy every moment, while striving to positively impact the lives around us. We need to find some enjoyment in everything we do, including work and exercise. We cannot save time by missing sleep and exercise and eating for convenience instead of nutrition. We will defeat our purpose by dying sooner or losing our muscles’ functional ability as we age.

So, reflect on your life for just a moment then take action including devoting three to five of those 168 hours a week to exercise. Only by doing so, will you have the confidence, energy and ability to enjoy your borrowed time on this planet, whether that is 33 years or 100 years-plus. Thank you for spending a few minutes of your valuable time to allow me to opine and share my rants on staying fit.

Perry Buchanan, owner of PT Gym, is certified as an Exercise Physiologist through the American College of Sports Medicine, and Fitness Nutrition Specialist through the National Academy of Sports Medicine. Email him at [email protected]. Follow @ptgym on Twitter.