Healthy Daily Activity

1-      Walk more. Just walking alone is a very beneficial exercise which can help you stay in shape, feel more energetic, and get healthy. Not all exercise has to include painful muscles and lots of sweat! Walking is easy to fit into your basic daily activities too, making it one of the easiest solutions for staying in shape.

• The easiest way to get more walking in is to park further away from wherever you’re trying to go. Park at the back of the parking lot in the mall, grocery store, or your workplace. You can even go further and park a block or two away from even the furthest reaches of the parking lot.
• The next easiest way to fit in more walking is to make sure that you’re always taking the stairs. Skip the elevator and escalator in favor of the stairs when you can.
• A slightly more challenging but still very doable way to get more activity into your day is to start taking public transit. Not only will this save you a lot of gas money, but it usually involves at least slightly more walking than your normal commute. Google Maps has an excellent public transit planner (just select the bus icon when planning a route) which will help you figure out when to leave, what routes to take, and how much you’ll get to walk.

2-      Change your desk set-up. Standing while you work can help your body get more activity than if you were just sitting down. Spend at least some of your work day standing instead of sitting in order to help your blood flow and maintain your muscles.

• If you’re not sure what your boss would think about this change, just be strategic in how you introduce the idea: “If you help us make these changes, it will keep us healthier and happier, which means that you have to spend less money in the long run on healthcare costs for us.”
• There are many desks available which you can purchase that switch between normal desk height and standing desk height. This will make it easy to take a break for sitting when the standing becomes too difficult for the task that you’re working on.

3-      Use a ball chair. You might also want to change how you sit when you do need to be in a chair. Switching to an exercise ball instead of a regular chair will go a long way towards helping you to maintain your core muscles and also keep you more alert.

• If you find a basic exercise ball to be too difficult to balance on, you can also get specialized anchored models. These still have some benefit, but not quite as much as the normal ball.

4-      Have walk meetings. If you need to have a meeting at work and most of what you will be doing is simply talking and taking notes, consider getting your coworkers to join you in a walk around the halls or around the building, instead of just sitting in the meeting room. This will keep everyone more alert and also get you some activity which will help keep everyone energized.

• You can take notes into your phone or even audio-record the meeting, if you’re worried about forgetting some of the information you discussed.

5-      Do more chores. Lots of household chores actually involve a lot of exercise and being better about doing chores can be a great way for you to fit activity and exercise into your day. Hoard the most exercise intensive chores for yourself and get your family doing everything else.

• Exercise intensive chores include mowing grass using a push-mower, making the bed, doing the laundry, and scrubbing the bathtub.

6-      Walk on your breaks. Instead of just sitting and staring at the wall when you’re on your work breaks, try taking a walk through the halls. This will help you stay alert, get re-energized, and also stay active.

Reference: Wikihow

Prepared By: Nemo So