7 Simple Health and Fitness Tips for Busy Executives

January 21, 2026

Has your health taken a backseat to your professional life?

Has your health and fitness suffered due to your super busy schedule?

If you are like a lot of executives in today’s world, then chances are it has suffered. I have good news though, it doesn’t have to! Below are 7 simple health and fitness tips for busy executives that you can apply starting immediately to get results no matter what your schedule is like.

1. Make Your Health and Fitness a Priority

This doesn’t mean that you have to stop doing the things that your career demands of you, it just means that you have to fit exercise into your schedule and you have to make some minor adjustments to your current diet If you want to lose weight, build muscle, burn body fat, become healthier, get in shape, have more energy, sleep better, etc. You have to stop using your busy schedule as an excuse. I get it, your schedule is crazy and the last thing you want to fit in is working out or go on a diet. If your health is suffering and you want results, then you have to add some exercise to your busy schedule and you have to make some diet changes. The good news for the diet - you don’t have to go on a diet, you don’t have to give up any food or drink, you just have to make some minor adjustments. Control what you can control!

Before you move on though, you have to decide that you are going to make your health and fitness a priority. It has to be something that you place an importance on moving forward. That doesn’t mean that you have to quit doing other things or try to alter your already crazy life, but what it does mean is that you have to decide that your health and fitness is something that you are going to put into your life on a regular basis moving forward.

2. Adjust Your Mindset

Now that you are going to improve your health and fitness, the next step is to adjust your mindset. Get out of the all or nothing thinking. Your health and fitness doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be better and it just has to be an ongoing part of your life. While your busy schedule doesn’t mean that you get a pass from diet and exercise, it does give you a pass to adjust your thinking.

Doing something is better than doing nothing. In the past, one of the things that probably prevented you from exercising is that you thought that if you didn’t have time to do everything 100 percent then why do it at all? Kinda like your career! Well with your health, the important thing is that you do better than you have been doing. What you have been doing has produced your current health and shape. So if you want to improve your health and shape, you have improve, your current exercise and diet.

If you get started doing some exercise and make some diet improvements and do them on a regular basis, you will get results, and you will improve over time. Sometimes it just takes enough to get started. Get the ball rolling and then once you make your health and fitness a habit and start seeing results, everything improves from there.

Remember, your results are relative to your current diet and exercise routine, not to a perfect diet and exercise routine. To see results, all you have to do is improve what you are currently doing.

3. Schedule Your Health and Fitness

Working out is not a spur of the moment kind of thing. It should be a part of your life just like work and other non-negotiables are. If you keep a calendar or planner (which I know you do), then schedule your workouts on it. Treat them like an appointment. Often times, people put no value on workouts and base them on convenience. It’s time you book yourself on your calendar! Fill in your calendar for the week with everything that you have to do and then schedule everything else around those things. Include your workouts in this! Schedule in at least 3 workouts for the week (4 or 5 if possible). Probably the number one reason people miss workouts is because they make them optional and they base it on if it’s convenient or not each day.

Do the same with your diet. Look at your calendar and put all the times on there that you will not be eating good because of work or whatever reason you may have and then make sure you eat good the rest of the time. Remember, the diet doesn’t have to be perfect to get results, it just has to be better than it used to be.

4. Be Efficient

The most practical health and fitness tip for busy people that I can give is to be efficient with your exercise. You don’t have time to waste, so you have to work hard when you exercise. With your workouts, try doing total body workouts that allow you to get in a lot of exercises in a short amount of time. Try doing combination exercises and supersets where you go back and forth between different exercises instead of resting between exercises. Try to avoid exercises and machines that are easy to do and take too much time to do them.

With your cardio, the best tip that I can give is to work hard for a shorter amount of time. You can get in a good cardio session in 15 minutes if you work hard enough. Work as hard as you can for 15 minutes instead of working at a low or medium level for 30 minutes to an hour.

Work hard, be efficient, don’t waste time. If it were easy, everyone would be in shape.

5. Skip a Meal

This is tip is also mentioned in my 7 Easy Weight Loss Diet Tips post. One of the best diet adjustments you can make is to cut calories. The easiest way to cut calories is to skip a meal. You don’t have to eat 5 times per day and not eating will not mess up your metabolism. These are diet myths. Don’t ever eat because you think you have to. The goal is to burn more calories than you normally burn and to eat less than you normally eat. The greater the deficit the faster the body fat falls off. All that matters at the end of the day is that you created a deficit.

You are super busy, and the last thing you have is time to put towards learning a special diet and preparing food and eating based on a certain schedule or plan you have to follow.

Instead of going on a diet, just cut your calories by skipping a meal or two. Have a cup of coffee or a water or a zero calorie drink instead of those calories you normally have in a meal. This is also a way to enjoy your other meal or meals a little more. Don’t cancel it out by adding the same amount to your other meals, but if you cut out 500 calories at lunch and then add 250 to dinner, then you still came out 250 ahead!

For a quick easy crash course in diet improvements that still allow you to eat the foods you love and still allow you to go to those work dinners, check out my eBook, Calorie Budgeting 101.

6. Don’t Quit

This is arguably the most important health and fitness tip for the busy person that I can give. None of it matters if you quit. You are guaranteed not to get results if you quit. Your health and fitness routine will be good some days/weeks/months and it will be not so good some days/weeks/months. As long as you don’t completely quit then you will get results and maintain results.

If you miss a workout, no big deal, do it the next day. If you miss a few workouts or an entire week, it’s still not the end of the world. Start back the next week. Just don’t let a missed week turn into quitting completely and then waiting 6 months to start back again and then on and off that roller coaster for the next several years.

7. Get a personalized plan

The easiest way to set yourself up for failure is to try to just follow some random plan or diet and try to adjust your life into it. The best route to success for you in your health and fitness journey is to fit health and fitness into your life.

As a busy executive, you have probably tried exercise programs before and have probably gone on diets before. And you have probably quit the exercise and failed on the diet. Why did you fail? Chances are, because it was impossible to succeed with those workout programs and diets with your lifestyle. Your lifestyle got in the way.

You have too many demands from your career that you cannot adjust for a workout plan or diet, so the key is to adjust a workout plan and diet around your demands. I have worked with several of the top executives in the Birmingham area and with super busy schedules and I can show you how I helped them and how I can help you. I can show you exactly how to do this without having to suffer in your professional life or your personal life. And trust me - it is easier than you think.

I’ll meet you where you are in life and design a plan that is progressive and can be done when and where is best for you. And with accountability!

Book a Free Fitness Strategy Call 👉HERE

Conclusion

What’s more important than what you do, is that you do it. This is especially important to the busy person. Start today and apply these 7 health and fitness tips for the busy executive to your own personal health and fitness routine. Mold a routine to your busy schedule and commit to doing something with your diet and exercise and don’t quit.
Make your health and fitness a priority, adjust your mindset, schedule your health and fitness, be efficient, skip a meal or two, don’t quit, and get a personalize plan and you will be set up for success, regardless of how busy you are. If you stick with it, regardless of how good your routine is, you will get results!