These days, life moves faster than ever before. For most people, that translates into cramming more activities into an average day than any objective person would consider a good idea. The funny thing is, though, we still have only 24 hours in a day. That reality means that sacrifices are being made somewhere.
For most people, the sacrifice comes in the form of getting fewer hours of sleep than they need each day. For others, it’s not getting to spend enough time with their family. Overwhelmingly, though, the sacrifice is in the arena of self-care – and more specifically that busier people are having a harder time than ever fitting regular exercise into their schedules.
That’s one of the reasons that fitness trackers have become so popular. They function as much to track out exercise habits as they do to shame us into doing better. But fitting some exercise into your daily routine isn’t as hard as it might seem. Here are three simple ways to sneak some exercise into your day without changing much about your normal daily routine.
Have a Destination Lunch
For most people, the one major part of their day that they have some control over is their lunch hour. But let’s be honest. Who wants to skip lunch to go to a gym?
Instead, to turn your daily lunch hour into a pleasant exercise routine, have a destination lunch instead. Pick a nearby park where you can take your lunch to go. You’ll get a workout on the walk to and from the office, as well as in the spare time you have when you finish eating.
If the weather’s bad, you can do the same thing at any nearby mall or shopping plaza. Just make sure not to linger too long in any of the stores – no matter how big of a sale they might be having. For some bonus benefits, you can even add a SNAC supplement to your lunch to make sure you’re getting the nutrition your body needs to thrive.
Don’t Text, Call
Today, most people conduct the bulk of their communications via text messaging or chat applications. While that’s little more than a sign of the times, it has come with an interesting consequence: people tend to stay seated at their desks or elsewhere when typing on a smartphone or other device.
One way to get some extra exercise into your schedule is to make it a point to make calls whenever possible instead of relying on text messaging. When you do, you can get up and move around while you continue to talk. That should buy you plenty of time in your day to get some additional steps in, which can make all the difference in your overall health.
Skip the Elevator
If you’ve ever been to a gym, you’ve probably seen people spending hours on stationary stair-climbing machines. They’re doing it because walking up and downstairs is a fantastic way to get in shape. That should be great news to all busy office-dwellers because one of the hidden perks of every building is that they have staircases you can use whenever you want!
To sneak a great workout into your day, resolve to avoid using the elevators in the buildings you dwell in as much as possible. Unless you’re in a very large multi-story building, taking the stairs instead won’t cost you any extra time and is also one of the best kinds of exercise you can get. Once you make this a habit, you’ll look at the stair-climbers in the gym and wonder why they’re paying so much to do something you do each and every day – no membership dues required.
No More Sacrifices
The bottom line here is that no matter how busy you get, there’s always a way to get some exercise as you move from task to task throughout the day. If you work to include these three simple changes, it won’t cost you additional time and the cumulative effects are well worth the effort. And the next time one of your friends or coworkers tells you that they’re too busy for a workout, challenge them to a race to an upper floor and show them just how wrong they are.