A great way to increase the total physical activity in your day is to add challenges to your usual daily activities. This is referred to as “incidental exercise” and the key is to replace a few ‘convenient’ activities each day with something that will cause you to move more.
There are many opportunities in your everyday life at home to be more active. Consider what you do each day at home and look at how to change your everyday chores to burn more calories. Do these things more often, for longer or more intensively. Small changes to your lifestyle that can make a big difference.
- Walk around the house when you’re on a phone call.
- Lose the television remote control – get up to change the television channel.
- Dance to your favourite music while you are doing the housework. 30 minutes of dancing housework = 340 calories burned!
- Take the washing to the clothesline in several small bundles instead of one big bundle – that way you’ll walk more. 1 hour of gardening = 304 calories burned!
- Do some extra gardening or set yourself a weekly household project that requires physical activity.
- Take 2 trips to walk the bins out on re-cycling day.
- Walk the children to school.
- Don’t pay someone to wash your car or go through the car wash, put the energy into washing the car yourself (and save some money too). 1 hour of car washing = 504 calories burned!
- Move while watching TV. Try walking on the spot or ride an exercise bike or walk on a treadmill. Don’t just find a comfortable position and stay in it. Make up TV exercises for your whole family, wiggle your legs, circle your feet or move your arms or hands.
- Walk to the corner shops instead of driving.
