Week 8: Increase your Daily Activity
Filed Under (Fitness, Goal Setting) by Small Changes on 22-03-2010
Finding ways to make your everyday living more active is one of the smallest changes you can make to improve your health. Increasing your daily activity by taking the stairs instead of the elevators; walking into the bank instead of using the drive-thru; cooking a meal instead of relying on a frozen entrée or take-out; or doing household chores like vacuuming and cleaning the kitchen on a regular basis, have all been proven to improve the health of inactive people. For example, a study conducted on inactive young women showed lower total cholesterol, increased HDL or “good” cholesterol, and improved resting heart rate with 2 minutes of stair climbing a day for 5 days a week on a public access staircase. With this study in mind, the small change for this week focuses on increasing daily activity through stair climbing. Stair climbing can benefit everyone and stairs can be found almost everywhere. Why wait for elevators when there are stairs? See you in the stair well!
Your Small Change: Make sure that you walk up at least three flights of stairs 5 days this week.
More Information
Many people make excuses for why they can’t be more physically active. Excuses include being too tired, not having the time, and/or not having the money. The truth is that getting more physically active does not take any extra time or money. One can increase his/her physical activity just by living their everyday life. Think about just increasing the activity you do in your day-to-day routine. Instead of taking five minutes to find the closest parking spot, take the first spot you see in the back of the lot and walk a little farther. You have saved time by not looking so long for a spot, and you got some extra physical activity in the process. It really is that easy. Taking the stairs is also another great way to increase activity, and one that you can easily do at work. So, start increasing the physical activity in your life today by taking the stairs instead of the elevator.
Here are some other ways to increase physical activity in your daily life:
| Activity | Calories Burned |
| Washing and waxing the car by hand | 300 |
| Walking into the gas station to pay | 5 |
| Washing and chopping vegetables for 15 minutes | 10-13 |
| Gardening and mowing for an hour | 360 |
| Shopping at the mall for an hour | 145-240 |
| Walking the dog for 30 minutes | 125 |
| Walking to a colleague’s office, standing, and talking for three minutes | 6 |
| Walking up three flights of stairs | 15 |
| Changing the channel manually | 3 |
| Standing and talking on the phone for 30 minutes | 20 |
| Ironing and vacuuming for an hour | 152 |
Source: Health Magazine July/August 2002