Aug
18
- Living A More Active Life - Part 1, Start At The Office
- Living A More Active Life - Part 2, Continue At Home
- Living A More Active Life - Part 3, Have Fun With It
Last Wednesday I started talking about how people can add more physical activity into their lives. I started out with the office because that’s a good example of a large chunk of your life that is spent sitting down. However, I want to move on to the home now, and how we can be more active while at home. By the way, in response to an email I got over the weekend, yes I do apply all of these tips to my own life. I don’t just preach things on this site and then ignore them, all of these items are things I do myself.
The Home
You get home from a long day at work and all you want to do is sit down. Really? Are you sure about that? No offense, but most people spend their entire workday sitting down so why the heck are you so tired at home? Now that doesn’t apply to everyone, there are quite a few of you who are very physically active at work, but if you’re an office worker like myself, there’s no reason to need to “rest” after a long day at the office. In fact, there’s still a lot you need to accomplish. You need to take care of the yard, clean the house, go shopping, cook food and a whole host of other activities. Those activities are actually the key to being active while at home.
Gardening
Got a lawn? Do you mow it yourself or pay a gardener? If you pay a gardener, why? If you do it yourself, do you ride one of those silly ride on lawnmowers? What you’re telling me is that you paid a lot of money for a machine that eats a ton of gas so that you can be lazy and inactive. Why? Does this make sense? You’re throwing away money so that you can be unhealthy. Sounds crazy to me.
Gardening can be incredibly physically active. Mowing, planting, sheering, pruning, weeding are all physical activities. Yet people choose to hire a gardener or use power tools. These are typically the same people who complain about not having enough time to be active. Get rid of those power tools and go back to good old fashioned muscle power. You’ll be active, you’ll save money and your yard will look great.
Cleaning
Our new house doesn’t have a dishwasher. It’s a new experience for me having lived with a dishwasher my entire adult life. Now I spend a few minutes each day washing the dishes. End result? We save money on electricity, we save water and I get a bit of extra activity. Is it strenuous exercise? Of course not, but it’s physically active and that’s all we’re after here.
Errands
I’ve talked about this before. I try to run every errand I can on the bike or by walking. This includes shopping, dropping off the mail, visiting my mom, going to a friend’s house and so on. Taking the bike costs me an extra minute or two here and there, but it’s great physical activity and it saves me money. As a little bonus, the bike also prevents me from buying too much when I go shopping since I know I have limited space.
Do You Notice A Trend?
Look at all of these items I have listed above. They’re common, every day things. Most people clean, wash dishes, run errands or take care of yards. These aren’t unusual activities. The key is making them physical activities. All I’ve done for that is do them myself and do them without the help of electricity or gasoline. I’ve taken my every day tasks and converted them to use muscle power. That’s it. That’s all it takes to be physically active at home. As a bonus to being healthy, you also get to save money and who can argue with that?
There’s A Limit
Of course, there’s always a limit. There are some things I can do and some things I cannot. For example, I could start washing all my clothes by hand but I don’t. I could also start churning my own butter and raising chickens in the back yard but I don’t do that either. Everyone has a line which they cannot cross because they’re missing the skills, the time or both. That’s fine, I’m not advocating a return to the days before electricity. However, it seems to me that many people willingly stop far before they even approach this line.
Take a look at your life. Take a look at the activities you do at home. Is there a way in which you could reasonably convert them into physical activities? That hedge that needs trimming every two weeks, do you really need the electric trimmer or could you do this yourself? Can you walk to the corner and drop off the mail or do you really need to get in the car for that? These questions are part of a process that converts a sedantary home life into an active one.
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Being active at home doesn’t mean working out, it means doing the same things you do every day but using your body to do them. Once you start, you’ll see how easy it is.
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Comments
One Response to “Living A More Active Life - Part 2, Continue At Home”
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I enjoyed the article. One thing I tend to put off is getting enough sleep. I recently had a string of about 10 days where I didn’t get more than 4 or 5 hours per night. It started to catch up to me and I felt like I was getting the flu. I “forced” myself to get about 7 hours of sleep in one night and the difference in how I felt was pronounced.
Take care,
M