When you are busy, trying to find a chunk of time to get to the gym can be challenging. Finding time to spare to drive to the gym, change, exercise, change again, and then go home is not always easy. If you are trying to stay healthy or are trying to lose weight, do not despair if you can’t always make it to the gym!
Good news: You do not need to find time to be at the gym daily in order to keep up your fitness levels and to burn extra fat and calories. Sneaking in a bit of exercise here and there adds up, and exercising is easier than you might think. Here are five easy ways to get your body up and moving.
5 Tips For Including More Activity Into Your Day
1. If you have a house or an apartment, it needs to be cleaned, right? If you have a yard, it needs to be looked after. Gardening and cleaning are a double bonus, they are chores that need to be done, and they are great for burning calories. So, accomplish two things at once and get busy! Thirty minutes of vacuuming can burn up to 150 calories, and then add in cleaning the floors, dusting, and the bending and stretching and other cleaning tasks that are involved. By the time your house or apartment is clean, you have had a full body workout.
2. Who doesn’t love music? If you love to sing along and you always want to move to the music when you are listening to it, go for it! Do not fight the urge to move to the beat of your favorite tunes. In fact, get up and dance. Dancing burns a lot of calories and it is a great way to get your mind off your troubles and shed stress while burning fat. Make a playlist of your favorite dance tunes that will play for about twenty minutes, and then just get up and dance! Even if you don’t have twenty minutes, go ahead and dance to one or two songs; you are still burning calories. If you do this often throughout the day, it definitely adds up.
3. Here’s a sneaky way to get in some extra walking for those of you who drive to work: Stop circling the lot to find the closest parking space! Instead, park in the back, and then walk. That extra bit of walking twice a day, or four times a day if you go out to lunch, will add up. If you are not working, you can apply the same trick for your shopping; just park further out and walk to the store.
4. Sneak in some exercise during commercial breaks: Commercials are something that we watch because we have to, not because we want to. Instead of watching the commercials, use them as a mini break to get moving. Stand up, walk around, dance, jog in place, or do push-ups, sit-ups, lunges or squats while the commercials are on. There are plenty of exercises you can do at home without a gym. Then sit back down to enjoy your show when the commercial break is over.
5. Turn family time into play time: Think about it: You send your kids outside for fresh air and exercise, but you need it too! Go on a family walk, a hike, or a bike ride. Instead of watching your kids play sports outside, join them! Play tag and just unleash your inner child. It’s great bonding time with your kids and good exercise for you.
As you can see, getting in exercise is easier than you might think and once you make these sneaky exercises into habits, the benefits really add up. The trick is simply to stay active! The more you move, the more calories you burn, so whenever you find yourself with a few minutes of quiet time, make use of it. You will stay fit and work on losing weight, without needing to go to the gym.
What’s your favorite “sneaky” exercise?
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