3 Simple Steps to Keep Active Without Working Out

A sedentary lifestyle involves more than a tendency to avoid workouts; it affects every action you take (or don’t take) all day, every day. Many of us have developed very “lazy” habits, avoiding virtually all forms of exercise except what we must do to meet our daily obligations regarding work, shopping, and errands.

When you decide to lose weight, one obvious component of your goal will probably be working out for a certain amount of time each day. But if that’s the ONLY physical activity you do, you may be limiting your results.

Instead, you may want to set a goal to include more physical activity throughout the day to complement your official workouts. Below are a few simple ideas for doing so:

Gardening is a great way to stay active without visiting the gym.

#1 – Add Steps

Buy a cheap pedometer for $5 and put it on each morning when you get dressed. Then pay attention to how many steps you take during your normal routine. Make it your mission to keep adding steps daily, until eventually you are taking close to 10,000 steps daily. Ten thousand steps is roughly 5 miles in distance, depending on the size of the steps.

How can you add more steps? Take the longer way around when working, shopping, and running errands. Park farther away from your destinations and walk the rest of the way. Make more trips when loading and unloading the car, even carrying one object at a time instead of several.

#2 – DIY (Do it Yourself)

Rather than having your kids or spouse fetch things for you at home, keep getting up several times per hour and get them yourself – even offer to get things for your family members. Go up and down stairs to fetch things as often as possible, rather than avoiding stairs like many out-of-shape people do.

#3 – Add Weight

While you are doing all this extra walking around, wear ankle weights (or wrist weights and pump your arms) to increase the intensity of your movements. Carry heavy bags of groceries and pet food yourself instead of asking your spouse to do it.

These little actions may not seem overly difficult, and they aren’t – but if you do enough of them all day, every day, you’ll burn substantially more calories and strengthen your muscles faster than just by working out for 30 minutes a day.

Even if these small actions seem to be too much for you at the beginning, do what you can and as you get stronger you can increase the amount and intensity later.