Ever feel like your workload has frozen your body in place? Back when I was a workaholic, exercise was the first habit to go…and I became overweight, lost my energy, and my health suffered. Today I’ll share how adding movement into your morning routine can pay you dividends in energy and health. Eliminate the phrase ‘working out’ if it feels too stressful and just commit to moving every day, even if for only 5 minutes at first. Find one that doesn’t feel like a chore — whether it be dancing, stretching, or playing with the dog or kids. No matter what form of movement you choose, it’s guaranteed to lift your energy and supercharge your day!

Read transcript below:

Steve Napolitan: Welcome to More Business, More Live daily. And today I’m going to talk about exercise, which I like to call movement because you don’t have to do any specific workouts, but we want to move our body on a daily basis. And how this has impacted me, let’s talk about it.

So there was a time in my life where I was doing gym rotations, I used to play hockey high school and into college and through a good portion of my 20s. And during those early years, I would have a gym regiment and really work out my body so I could better my game play. And so I had these routines. Then as business got going and that I had my businesses going, then I became a workaholic and I was working so much that the gym time got cut out and I did get overweight. I was pushed over 260 pounds. And for those of you that are not in the United States and you’re working on grams, I don’t know how much kg I was, but basically I was just overweight. And I had a good gut going and I definitely had loss of energy and I wasn’t trying to start movement back in my life so that I could lose that in a way that I looked or the way that I looked in the mirror, I actually wanted to have more energy. I didn’t feel good and I would ache.

And those things were what got me really going. And what I did as I was learning to meditate, I started with really short times and I started to build the consistency. And I thought, “Hey, why don’t I do that with my workouts?” And so I started with just five minutes right next to my bed just doing jumping jacks or pushups, sit ups, planks, even just with your forearms or all the way up, stretches, whatever I could do, I would just do. Or just lunges, a minute of lunges around my room. I would just do these things. Or go up and down my stairs during the periods of times when I’ve had stairs in my house, boom, boom, just going up and down. Just some sort of movement.

And even have gotten to the point where sometimes too you could just dance, just turning on music, whatever lifts you up and get your body moving. And it’s important to do all the parts of our body as well. So if you can incorporate different things on different days. Sometimes I would just do joint rotations, turn my wrist, turn my elbow, turn my shoulder. So whatever it is, whatever thing. Or even just neck rolls, just moving our body and just watch how it lifts you up.

So right, away within a couple of weeks of doing this, even I think within a week, I started to have more energy, a boost of energy before I even drink any coffee. And now I’m in my life where I don’t have any caffeine. I noticed that it affected me in a negative way, even just a couple cups and or one cup in the morning. Because I did slowly reduce myself. I had to gradually get off of caffeine. But in doing so, I have more energy consistently through the day instead of having the ups and downs that I had when I was drinking caffeine. I will, if I’m in Melbourne or I’m in Italy, then I will have an espresso occasionally. But I don’t make that a daily practice, but the coffee is so good that I definitely partake a little bit. So I’m not saying I’m absolutely abstaining, but yes, 98% of my life or 99% probably is caffeine free. And that comes I think from moving my body and lifting my energy and feeding it well too.

We didn’t talk about nutrition this week, but eating well, things that make me feel good. And so I really look at what do I feed my body. And so I just want to encourage you today to just start moving. These things, these practices that I’ve taught you over this week are just suggestions, right? So put out there again the four things, meditate, to journal, to read, and to work out.

And if you have to combine some of these, you could actually listen to an audio book while you’re working out, so you could make this even shorter. Because I started with five minutes for each of these exercises, and then I’ve moved up to an average of 20 minutes per each exercise. So it’s about a 90 minute morning routine. But if you need to condense that, you can do 20 minutes, 20 minutes, 20 minutes. And you can combine the reading with the workout if you do like an audio book. And then you can do it in an hour, you can do 10 minutes of each of these and make it 40 minutes. And then even if you combine the working out and the reading.

And again movement, you don’t have to call it working out. So if that is a word that’s not a good for you, then just say move your body, literally move your body. And you can look up tons of workouts. I’m not a trainer here, I’ve had different trainers in my life so I could give you tips, but you can look up on YouTube, look up yoga and even put five minute yoga exercise and something will come up, and just watch that and do that routine and then try different things. You can look up many different exercise routines that are short and you can actually have an impact on your body.

And all of this is to have more energy, right? When I meditate, I clear my mind. When I journal, I get things down, get it out of my mind so I could relax. When I read, I add new things into my mind. And when I work out, then I lift up my overall energy so that I can take action with the things that I’m thinking about, that I’m getting movement on in my life as I’m getting movement with my body. So please, just try these things out just so that we can have some effective time. If you’re watching these videos, give them a shot, give it a try. Let me know how it goes. Give me comments here. And as always, remember to choose gratitude and create freedom. Take care. Bye, bye.