When people begin a workout or diet plan, they often treat it as an all-or-nothing matter.
“I’m going to stop eating carbs.”
“I’m going to get up at 4AM to work out, 6 days per week.”
When you’re used to eating eating donuts for breakfast, Doritos for lunch, and occasionally taking the stairs at work as your only form of exercise, you’re probably not going to find this to be sustainable. It’s much better to begin with something you can realistically commit to than to quit completely after 2 weeks of agony. This may sound familiar, but consistency is, in fact, key. Losing 50 pounds in 6 months is essentially worthless if you revert to old habits and regain it all over the next year.
Similarly, someone who finds themselves with newly imposed limits on time due to changes in work or life circumstances will have to make modifications as necessary. If you used to train 6 days per week, get 9 hours of sleep, and eat pre-prepared healthy foods at the dining hall while in college, you’re probably not going to be able to maintain the same schedule while working full-time and raising a kid as an adult.
Here is my approach to such predicaments:
1. Train efficiently. Driving to the gym when you're absolutely beat from a long day at work just to halfheartedly run in place and then go home is a lot of time invested for very little reward. Doing some cardio right before your lifting may tire you out slightly (you’ll find that you can adapt to this quickly), but it will also warm you up effectively and save you a trip to the gym later in the week. Likewise, absentmindedly doing 5 different chest exercises will be less effective than performing 3 sets of bench presses with maximum mental focus on each set and progressive overload from week to week. To borrow a term from Alex Viada, eliminate “junk miles” from your training — in both cardiovascular and resistance training.
2. Realize that time-constricted training will not be ideal — but it can be damn effective. In an ideal situation, you would run and lift on separate days, or at separate times of the day. You’d be able to train 6-7 days per week, often twice per day, with a perfect diet and 9 hours of sleep per night. For a person with a full-time job, family commitments, and no desire to be a professional athlete, this won’t typically be realistic. Training 3-4 days per week can get you very far, and even twice per week training can allow you to progress or at least maintain a solid level of fitness. Doing something is most definitely better than nothing.
3. Find the right time of day for you to train. You don’t get bonus points for working out at 5 in the morning. Though morning training certainly might be best for some people, actually training is far more important than when you train. If you find that you can’t consistently stick to morning workouts, consider going to the gym right from work (my preference) or at night.
4. Invest in some degree of a home gym. This will allow you to get in more workouts per week without having to make extra trips to the gym. Even a pair of dumbbells can give you a solid workout, especially when coupled with bodyweight exercises.
5. Prioritize sleep. There is nothing glamorous about sleep deprivation. It messes you up big time. To paraphrase Stan Efferding, you don't build muscle in the gym, you build it when you're recovering from the gym.
6. Keep your diet simple. Figure out something you can stick to. Eat protein at every meal. Don’t snack. It’s not necessary for an adult to eat 7 times per day. Eat mostly single-ingredient “whole” foods — meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, non-sweetened dairy, nuts, whole grains. Be wary of any diet that tells you to cut out an entire macronutrient class or requires you to buy their specific brand of foods/supplements.
Here are some of my favorite articles about time-constricted training:
https://www.t-nation.com/training/30-minutes-to-mass
https://www.t-nation.com/training/effective-training-for-busy-men
http://besmartbestrong.blogspot.com/2017/07/adjusting-to-lifestyle-ebb-and-flow.html (shameless self-plug)
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