Increase Physical Activity Without Realizing It
For many, including exercise as part of their daily life is complicated or boring. Is this the same for you? Thankfully, you can make a few small changes to your habits to achieve this. In this article, we offer you some tips to increase daily physical activity without even realizing it.
Every day we need at least 30 minutes of physical activity to keep us in good physical condition. Do not hesitate, therefore, to include these healthy habits right away to increase physical activity in a simple way.
Increase daily physical activity without realizing it
1. Get off a few stops earlier
Do we spend part of our day on public transport to get to work? If our means of transport is the bus and we have to leave at rush hour, it is not uncommon to have to spend time in traffic between queues, traffic lights and stops.
We can take advantage of this situation to increase our daily physical activity and avoid boredom. Just get off a couple of stops earlier than expected and walk to our destination. If the traffic is very heavy, it will also be an excuse to save time.
To make this short walk more enjoyable, we can listen to our favorite music.
2. Take the stairs
We have surely noticed that most of the buildings we frequent have more than one floor. Do you have a habit of taking the elevator? If so, why not choose to increase physical activity by favoring the stairs, even if it is only one floor.
It can cost us a little at first because it is quite an intense exercise. However, acquiring this good habit and being consistent will tone your legs and improve your breathing.
In the beginning it is best to climb the stairs slowly and without expecting too much. Over time, we will be able to increase the speed.
3. Riding a bicycle
How long have we not been on a bike? If we don’t want to walk because it seems too tiring, why not try changing the car for the bicycle. This way we will be exercising every day without even realizing it.
If we think it is a dangerous means of transport, remember that wearing a helmet, elbow pads and knee pads greatly reduce the risks. In addition, most modern cities educate on road safety to improve the safety of cyclists.
If we are still not convinced, we must remember that cycling improves motor skills, reduces stress and cholesterol.
4. Doing housework to increase daily physical activity
Most of us hate doing housework, but it can be a good way to increase physical activity. If walking or cycling isn’t your thing, let’s try cleaning, sweeping, pruning the garden or filling the pantry. Depending on the type of activity chosen, we will obtain different benefits:
- By pruning the garden during the day, you get vitamin D.
- By putting order in the cupboard or on the shelves, we improve joint health.
5. Play with the children
If you have children, siblings or cousins, you will know that they are always full of energy and rarely stop. So it’s not uncommon for them to fall out or get a few scratches.
Playing with them will allow us to keep an eye on them, relax and form strong bonds. But beware, we don’t intend to play video games or watch television.
We should choose activities that require movement and energy consumption. The best options are to play football, swim, run in the garden, etc. Depending on their age, you will have to think about activities that are more pleasant to them.
6. Walk while talking to increase daily physical activity
Are you always stuck on your mobile screen? Do you think it is impossible to exchange messages with friends and increase daily physical activity?
Receiving a phone call or spending hours chatting with our friends is the perfect opportunity to do some physical activity.
Instead of sitting on the sofa, we can get up and walk around the room we are in. We just have to be careful that there are no objects that could make us slip and fall.
We will be surprised to find that we have walked for more than thirty minutes without even noticing it.
7. Exercise while watching television
Do we like to watch our favorite series for hours? Can’t we miss a single episode of our favorite show? Considering that each episode lasts about an hour, you have the perfect opportunity to get some physical activity. We choose the option we prefer:
- We perform some stretching exercises.
- We use an exercise bike.
- We run in place or small jumps.
- We do a set of abdominals during advertising.
- If we watch TV with someone else, we can create challenges to make the activity even more fun.
Increasing daily physical activity is really simple. It just takes a little bit of effort and it can be fun in the end. Let’s include some of these activities right away to find that by the end of the day we will have done more than 30 minutes of exercise.
