Working out in the morning is hard.
Actually, it's really, really easy.
It's the physical act of waking up early, not hitting snooze, having all your crap ready-to-go, your post-workout snack/meal prepared (or buy a $9 smoothie, your life) part that's hard.
Feel me?
I love working out in the morning, I LOVE IT. I've done it the last 2 days (clearly a routine by now is it not?) and it's amazing the difference I feel going into the day.
Basically ALL THE ENDORPHINS vs ALL THE SADS. (RIP weekend, you are so good to me.) Helps when you down a pot of coffee afterwards too. Comin in HOT.
Anyway, waking up early is sad and it's not fun, and sleep is wonderful and the bed is cozy and it's dark outside, and your significant other is probably still in dreamland and the nocturnal creatures are still awake and the last thing you want to do is haul yourself on a run or to the gym or worse, to a boutique fitness studio where that $30 class and $15 late cancel is hanging over your head should you be a minute late.
But if I can do it, YOU can do it. I tried the evening workouts for a while - and they're not exactly for me. I say exactly because I appreciate an evening yoga class - but logistically I struggle. Why? Well there's the timing of your mid-afternoon/early-evening snack. (Necessary.) And the actual snack itself. (Pro tip: hummus before yoga is not recommended, ever.) There's also the fact that come 7pm I'm exhausted and I don't want to flow and om. I want to put sweatpants on and get horizontal on the couch and watch Game of Thrones. (True story, I'm about 11 years late to the party but I showed up damnit.)
But here's what's great about morning workouts:
- You go into the day ready to DOMINATE: regardless of your workout; cardio, barre, yoga, some high-intensity class, spin or even a walk, you'll feel 100x better starting your day after a sweat. Especially if you go into an office and it's like not your favorite thing to do. Take it from Elle Woods, "Endorphins make you happy."
- You make better choices all day long: After waking yourself up in the darkness of early morning and prevailing through that horrendous 60 minutes of sweat you're like so ready for breakfast (it's essentially all I think about during said workout), but also you just put forth a LOT of effort before most people are awake. I tend to not want to undo all that effort at breakfast. Smoothie me please sir. Cookie at lunch? Nah, I'm good.
- It's much harder to skip a morning workout due to plans: seriously tell me the last time you made plans at 6am? If you are the type to do this, we can't be friends, I'm sorry. After work and in the evenings there are appointments, dinners, happy hours, getting horizontal on the couch, all of the things. It's pretty easy to be like "buttery chard > spin class". But if you did said spin class in the AM, you win at the day. And life. Drink that buttery chard, you earned it.
- You sleep like a baby: okay the first couple mornings of wake-ups you'll sleep like the parent of a newborn and have vicious dreams/nightmares that you slept through your workout and my life is ruined, yadda yadda yadda - "did I miss my alarm?" "what time is it?" HELP. But then you'll get into this routine and by 10pm you'll be fast asleep and ready to go at 5:47am when your alarm goes off giving you just the right amount of time to slam a Nespresso and hit that 6am class/run/gym session
- Suddenly you have TIME in the evenings: after a few weeks of 7pm workouts and feeling like my week just meshed into one long-ass day, I suddenly have freedom after 5pm. I can get a mani/pedi. I can actually cook dinner (vs take-out hellooooo). I can spend time with boyfriend.
As Queen Bey would say, "Freedom, freedom where are you? Cuz I need freedom too!"
(Spoiler: I found it, it's in the morning workout game.)