It is great to get in your workout 3 days a week or 5 days or every day. It is great to get a workout ANY days a week! But a game changer is what you get in during the other hours of the day.
Studies have shown, that even if you exercise every day you can still have negative health benefits if you are inactive the rest of the day.
I would suggest adding two elements: NEAT and fun movement.
NEAT is short for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. It is basically the movements of your every day life that can help you burn calories and stay active.
Some examples are:
-fidget
-stand more
-take the stairs
-park further out
-walk and talk rather than have a sit down meeting
There are hundreds of ways you can make your day more active if you just look for ways to make it happen. Take a few minutes and think of ways you could add 30 more minutes of NEAT to your day.
The next one that will help is fun movement. This is getting more back to the roots of your childhood and adding more play, type activities to your life.
These could be playing sports, running/walking your dog, flying a kite, etc… What are some fun ways you can get out and move? You don’t do them for time, reps, weight or anything like that. The only unit of measurement for this one is fun. Fall in love with moving your body and you will be active the rest of your life.
My family combined NEAT and fun movement yesterday for our Sunday Family Workout. We played soccer for awhile, ran back and forth carrying bricks from one spot to another for a project we were doing, threw the football, snuck in a few pull-ups, did weighted walking lunges, wall balls, wrestled around, and just generally enjoyed each other’s company.
It was an awesome afternoon! By the end, I was drenched in sweat because we had been doing fairly intense, physical movements for 90 minutes. This is an ideal situation. When you can fool yourself into getting a workout in, that is not a workout.
My challenge for you this week is to add 30 more minutes of NEAT activity each day this week AND to get out one day and do some kind of physical movement that you enjoy. It doesn’t matter how hard or how long or what the activity is. Just move and have fun. You will love it, I promise.
