Day 18: Burn More Calories With Micro-Exercise | 30-Day Weight Loss-athon
Welcome to Day 18 of the 30-Day Weight Loss-athon.
All tasks in the 30-Day Weight Loss-athon are adapted from my 52 Weight Loss Missions program.
Read the steps first, then take 10 minutes to think about them and take action. Ready?
What You Need:
- A willingness to move it, move it.
Step 1
Doing your weekly 30 x 3 exercise sessions from Day 5 is great – it raises your heart rate, gets you sweating, and can burn lots of calories.
But there are many ways you can get micro-exercise into your day, too. Some people call it incidental exercise. I like to think of it as lifestyle exercise – something that becomes part of your lifestyle.
Each nugget of micro-exercise can seem tiny – and it’s good to think that way, so you’ll feel inclined to do one every chance you get.
But the benefits aren’t so tiny. Not only do the weight-loss calories add up, but by taking opportunities to move, you form a habit of moving.
So as a first step, open your mind to the ways you can add micro-exercise to your life. They don’t take a lot of effort, but they can add up to a lot of calories, taken together and over time.
Step 2
Next, let’s consider the myriad ways you can add micro-exercise to your daily life. Here are some:
- Take stairs rather than escalators or elevators (There are so stairs in your building – find them!)
- Don’t use remotes – get up and press the buttons
- Go talk to your colleagues rather than emailing them (bonus: you may save time on back-and-forth emails)
- Walk to work
- Walk the kids to school
- Wherever you go, move a little faster and more energetically
- Get off the train or bus one stop earlier and walk
- Park farther away (from the restaurant, shops, appointment) so you have to walk (bonus: parking may be easier at a distance)
- If at a dinner party, help to carry dishes to and from the table
- Put a bike or treadmill in front of the TV and move while you watch
- Do sit-ups or push-ups during ad breaks
- If you tend to have inactive weekends, make a project of doing chores, repairs or other household tasks
- Walk, cycle or run to the library, to pick up the kids, do errands, etc.
- Walk around the house while on the phone
- Play a game outside with the kids
- Take the (neighbor’s) dog for a walk
- Stop asking the kids/your spouse/your PA to pass you things, get something from over there, pick you up a coffee or go out to get your lunch – it’s annoying to them, and it denies you the chance to burn calories
- Put more energy into the housework – vacuum, hang laundry or dust with vigor
- Put more energy into the yard work – I don’t really know what goes on out there, but do it with a good posture and sense of speedy purpose
- Put more energy into your, um, love life – do it more often or with more sprightliness
- Wash the car faster and more energetically
- Do some gardening – the kind where you have to cart stuff around, dig holes, squat, wheel wheelbarrows and such; pruning bonsai doesn’t count
- Switch from passive to active family time – instead of watching movies or playing computer games, go for a bushwalk, play in the park, ride bikes together, or play fitness-based console games.
Hint: Use a pedometer for extra motivation.
There’s something about tracking anything that makes you want to do better at it. Using a pedometer can help motivate you to take extra steps throughout your day. So if you’re looking for incentive to move more in your daily life, it’s worth a try.
Step 3
Choose at least three forms of micro-exercise, from my list or add your own, that you’ll commit to doing as a new habit.
What will you do for your micro-exercise?
Check in!
And you’re done!
Be sure to leave your comment below to check in and stay accountable. If you’re reading this by email or in a reader then please click here to leave your comment.
See you tomorrow!
This is exactly what I’ve been doing for the past month! I really feel so much more energetic and am not out of breath so much. I use a pedometer called a Fitbit, and I love how it motivates me to be more active.
These are great tips. I will park further away at the shopping center, and just basically get moving more. Got my bike ready to go. Now just need to get over this illness so I can get to it.
We have steps at our house so I tend to run up them (not so safe going down) them instead of walking, building new garden beds is always great and trampolining with my almost 5 year old. He really loves it and it’s wonderful for the thigh muscles.
Taking Stairs – check.
Park car FAR away from school – check.
Wash car (elbow greasy to scrub out tyre gunk ) – check.
Wash sneakers by hand – check.
Did not do my regular exercises today :(- Donated blood, and felt woozy for the rest of the day.
I love to walk the stairs, frankly the elevators in my building scare me. I will start parking in the back lot, and my poor pup would probably love more walks.
A lot of these are hard, since I homeschool my 4 kids, and we don’t leave the house all that often. But I can definitely get out and play with them more, take walks. There is also a lot of yardwork to do, and a garden to plant this year.
my micor exercises are standing calf raises while standing still, I will fold the washing and put awat, and I will empty the dishwasher actively ( my kids will love those last 2).
I already park at a distance, most of the times (hate fighting) crowds. I am going to start taking stairs more often, even though they scare me. And general try to be more active and take advantage of the micro-exercise.
Back from holidays and now in civilization again and wow have internet connection too! Will have to catch up on almost 2weeks worth of tips. Looks like my challenge may go on for 45days to make up for time I have missed on taking up the tips 🙂
Just yesterday, I started using the restroom on a different floor at work, and I use the stairs. Since I’ve increased my water intake, that will be several times a day. I’m also going to park farther away, and if I need to grab lunch, I try to walk somewhere.
I already walk when I run errands during the day (if it is nice out), I also push mow our yard. I think I will also try to stop using the remote and get up to change the channels and maybe to some push-ups or sit-ups during commercial breaks!
Bike in front of the tv, do the yardwork, walk around the house on the phone, and try that pedometer app I downloaded and ignored.
When the kids are little, we are so busy that we get in the habit of having them help with little things, like getting something from the other room. This is a good reminder to make new habits of doing things for ourselves to burn calories once they can all dress and potty, if we learned to have a little pile near the stairs instead of making a quick trip to put things away immediately.
Great ideas! I know I can do this, I’m sure everyday will be a little different depending on what’s going on for the day but one micro-exercise I can incorporate for sure is running up and downstairs to go the food storage. I’m always sending the kids so that will be a good one for me. I’ll watch for ways to do this everyday.
I am using the stairs more, using the housework to increase the exercise and going to walk in the am!
With my knee still recovering from a sprained crucial ligament I will be a bit restricted as to what I can do. What I will aim to try and do with micro-exercising will be to 1 vacuum our floors lino and carpeted areas a bit quicker. 2 mop the floors faster in our house we have a big country kitchen and a long sun room which are both lino. 3 to try and go a bit faster on the exercise bike.
I run up and down the stairs instead of walking up and down, and I make more trips. I’ve started parking further away when I go shopping, and I’ll go up and down every aisle when I buy groceries to get in more exercise. I’ve also started doing a few minutes of abs exercise during commercial breaks.
I do like to listen to music when I clean house, and dance around while I work. I also like to work in the garden. Short walks around the yard can be good while talking on the phone. I have started walking around while talking, but I think I would enjoy it more outside. Also, I will begin to park further away from the store so that I have further to walk in and out.
housework, yard work, and gardening. Not that I like ANY of these things, but out of necessity…maybe I’ll have this place looking great by the time my husband gets back. I did log over 11,000 steps today…walking more for shopping lately, and I hardly ever take the stairs, unless I have someone waiting for me, or if it’s more than a couple floors up 🙂 Really, I think have come up with a way to do ‘life’ with as little energy as possible (I grew up in the US ‘energy crisis’!). I guess I need to reverse this trend!
well, I got ripped off with the pedometer yesterday. I was past 15,000 and still on the go and when I looked at it the dam thing had started again as it was past midnight so I didn’t get to find out my score for the day. oh well, lets hope I don’t get quite that much exercise today because I am tired.