photo credit: Symic

Regular exercise is one of the most important habits you can have in creating and maintaining a positive lifestyle.

Remove any belief that you have no time for exercise. Ensuring that you get yourself moving first thing can be a lot easier to do than you may currently think – All it takes is the right motivation.

Here are my top 5 ways exercise before work can transform your life.

1. Become more attractive

Who doesn’t want to look sexier? While exercise in general can shed pounds and keep you lean and sexy, there are great benefits to working out first thing.

Losing weight with exercise is all about increased metabolic rate. When you do your exercise early, you kick start your metabolism and keep it that way for well after you have finished and arrived at work. You can even burn extra calories for the whole day based solely on that morning workout.

Exercise early on an empty stomach, and your body will get its energy from stored fat instead of from the carbohydrates in your breakfast. Burning fat without prior eating can increase your fat loss by up to 300 percent!

3 times the benefit in 1/3 of the time? Its quite simply the smart thing to do.

Morning exercise can also help you to maintain a moderate diet right through till the evening. Exercise reduces your appetite, which means heavy foods become less appealing. You will also find that your perspective on eating will become healthier too. If you are doing positive things for your physique already, its only a small step to improving your diet.

Why grapple with temptation when you can kill it dead?

Get up early and do those stretches…It all starts there.

A morning exercise routine, is easier to maintain then at other times of the day. So start early, and you’ll start a habit that could change your life.

2. Sleep like a baby

Exercising in the morning improves the quality of your sleep. Create an early morning exercise routine, and you will find that your requirement for long nights begins to subside.

In the first few days that I started to exercise early, I found that I typically saved an hour of sleep each night.

1 hour of morning exercise can lead to breaking even time-wise, giving you all the benefits of exercise for free.

When you get up earlier, you are more likely to go to bed earlier too. Exercising in the morning helps to create a routine that helps to align your natural sleep cycle to your environment.

Start by rising 15 minutes earlier than you normally would. Then move it to 20 minutes, and keep increasing the time each day until you are waking up an hour earlier.

Equally, make sure that you are getting your head down earlier too.The positives far outweigh any negative points. If you put in the effort, doing becomes easier over time.

4. Unleash insane levels of focus to become super productive

Workout in the morning and you will subject yourself to a surge of oxygen supplied directly to your brain.

Mental capability increases for up to 10 hours after exercise. Imagine how much more you could do in a day with extra IQ points?

Just think about all those people thanking you (yourself included), because you met that deadline with time to spare.

For people who like to hack their life and maximize productivity, there is no better way then to maintain peak physical performance. 5 shots of coffee and handfuls of sugary snacks can boost your performance in the short term, but sooner or later you will crash. Exercise in the morning though, and you will maintain solid focus throughout your day.

Morning exercise becomes self perpetuating.

The further you get through the day, the less likely it becomes that you are going to be able to fit exercise into your schedule. When that happens, its the first thing that you will drop.

You can never predict what will happen. So don’t. Get your exercise in early and leave the rest of your day to getting things done.

5. Improve your health and vitality. Feel amazing.

Exercise in the morning on a regular basis, and you will no longer be chasing that euphoria that you feel when you get those endorphins flowing. Instead of avoiding sluggishness, having the routine can top up that great feeling and lead to more confidence.

Having high levels of energy from the moment you start work to the end of the day is life changing. If you are anything like me, you don’t want to just feel good some of the day, but for all of it. Exercising first thing is a fantastic way to achieve this.

After all, what can feel better than knowing you have improved your life situation before you have even started work?

A morning work out can give you a feeling of satisfaction. You know that you are doing something that is positive and is improving your health.

Nobody needs discipline when they are doing something that directly makes them feel good.

If you do your exercise outside, there is no air or noise pollution early in the morning. Being in a calm atmosphere can give you the space to collect your thoughts and understand what it is required of you in the day ahead.

So there you have it. I hope I have convinced you to give morning exercise some of your time and attention.

What will you be doing tomorrow?