Fitting Physical Activity into Daily Life
Running. Walking. Biking. Swimming. Working out. When thinking about physical activity, these are often the activities that come to mind. The ones that get your pulse rate up and make you break a sweat. My go to was always running; my feet would seemingly eat up the miles with an insatiable appetite. As life happened; I became a mom. Instead of chasing miles, I began chasing little feet. Life threw a few surprises our way as well and quickly physical activity, in the capacity that I believed it to be, fell to the wayside.
As I began Eat Healthy Be Active, I honestly thought that to be healthy, I had to run miles daily again. I had to push myself to the limit. I had to…what, I am not quite sure. My notions of health, as I have come to understand through this program, were not setting me up for success in living a healthy lifestyle. Rather, I was unintentionally setting up roadblocks before myself.
Fun fact, fitting physical activity into daily life does not have to be difficult. It does not have to take up large chunks of time or even resemble what we often think it looks like. Running, walking, etc. are all wonderful methods of getting physical activity into your day but, there are countless ways to add it in on a smaller scale.
It is recommended that we get 2.5 hours of moderate physical activity in weekly. This activity could include walking briskly and biking, or, you could add it in through modifying things you already do in your daily life. If you have stairs in your home, when you need to go up or downstairs, make a few consecutive trips up and down. When watching a show, do wall sits, push-ups, or walk around the house during commercial breaks. If you have a mountain of laundry to fold, do lunges to pick up pieces to fold. As the weather gets nicer, take on a gardening or landscaping project that gets you moving.
Once you begin looking at your daily activities through the lens of physical activity, you’ll find yourself fitting physical activity in easily. When out shopping, park further away from the stores to get more walking in. Throw music on and dance while cleaning or cooking. Vacuuming can lead to stretching and lunges as you move about the house. As I said, there are countless ways to go about adding physical activity into your daily life simply by thinking about the things you already do and modifying them to become more physical. Furthermore, if you break your 2.5 hours per week into 30 minutes per day, you can further break that 30 minutes down into 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there to pair it with your daily activities. Those smaller increments of time add up quickly and blend seamlessly into your day.
Utilizing this small step approach, I am hopeful that I will tie on my running shoes again soon. As I make natural moves to becoming more active in my day-to-day, I find my views on physical activity changing. No longer is running endless miles the epitome of what I strive for. Rather, I view it as an activity I enjoy and would like to see myself successful at again. However, I am letting go of the need to run fast and run far. Physical activity should work with your life, not against it. I am not at a time in my life when running 10 miles a day works for me. That does not mean I never will again, but it does mean that I can find other ways of adding in physical activity to my daily life that fit with where I am at now. In fact, I think tonight is a dancing while cooking kind of night; so I will be throwing on the tunes and making sure I get moving alongside my kids as we have fun in the kitchen.
If interested in learning more about the program, follow the link below to our Eat Healthy Be Active page: