21 Tips To Be Healthier Without Exercising

Some people just don’t feel like exercising – and we can understand that. But lying around the house the whole day and complaining about your health just doesn’t cut it. If you really hate gyms and doing push-ups, here are a few tips and tricks on how to have a slightly healthier lifestyle with normal, everyday activities.

1. Clean your house regularly

We’re not your mom to tell you when and how to clean your place of residence, but you know…when you think about it, cleaning the house is hard work. And not only is it hard work, it can be fun to some people – and everyone can make it fun for themselves. Do it in good company, do it with your favorite music, sing along while you are cleaning, just do it. Plus, you get to have a clean home, which is always a plus.

Apart from getting a basic strength buff, you will also burn tons of calories. For example, if you do some dusting for about 20 minutes, you lose 80 calories. If you dust for an hour, just one hour per week, you lose about 12 and a half thousand calories per year. That’s about 3.5 pounds per year, just for doing something you were supposed to do anyway! Come on now, where’s the delay? Grab that broom and the vacuum cleaner and get busy.

2. Take a walk when you’re having a bad day

There are tons of different ways how people deal with various levels of personal stress, but a lot of them do one thing – eat, eat, and eat. Well, don’t do that. Instead of taking a 200 calorie snack that will cause your stomach to scream for mercy afterwards and your toilet to shiver in fear, just get off that chair you’re sitting on and take a walk around the neighborhood.

Clear your head, think about something else (or don’t), we guarantee that you will come to (at least slightly) better conclusions. It usually happens when you have at least something to keep your attention, something that’s moving and changing, like traffic or people passing next to you. And not only that, but walking is essential to losing weight and staying in good shape. With a short walk of about 10-15 minutes, you lose 27 pounds in 10 years. For walking! Come on!

3. Change your posture at work

If you’re one of those people who work an office job for eight hours and don’t move out of that chair during their shift, don’t be surprised if you’re gaining weight. There are so many things you can do at work whenever you have a minute or two of free time. Walk to the bathroom, go get some coffee, bring someone some coffee, go to your colleague’s office and chat with them a bit. If you’re allowed to, go outside and take a breath of fresh air.

Don’t always resort to the elevator. If you work on the 86th floor, ride the elevator to the 85th and then walk one floor up. 12 steps on the staircase feel like a week of hard working out if you’re not used to any physical activity. But that’s just it – you mustn’t remove all physical activity from your life, you will just end up fat and unsatisfied with the way you look. And let’s not mention all the health problems, it’s a list that just keeps on going.

4. Go on activity holidays

Sure, it’s that time of the year when we all want to sit on a beach and do NOTHING. Yes, that is fun for a time, but if you are one of those people who go on a summer holiday to Greece and then sit next to a pool for two weeks, you’re missing out. There are so many things to do when you’ve got the free time, why waste it all on sitting in a coffeehouse, lounging in a chair and listening to crappy techno music?

Gather your friends and/or your family and go to a water park. Do you even know how many calories you can burn if you ride the slides down 10 times? And if you climb them yourself, without using an elevator or something similar, then you combine two exercises at once. Go swim in a pool, but don’t just sit in a pool. Swim, go take a couple of laps across the pool, no matter what style, no matter at what speed – just do it.

5. Play games with your friends and family

When was the last time you played tag? We bet you can’t even remember, but tag is actually an exhausting game. All those starts and stops and starts and stops – it’s a splendid thing for your condition and for your circulation. Nobody expects you to run as fast as Speedy Gonzales or to actually win in a game of tag, but just making a couple of short jogs when you’re playing with really young children will help you out a great deal. Plus, you’ll have a splendid time.

If you’re not the moving type, then just have somebody pass a ball to you, then pass it back to them. Toss the ball around, stretch your muscles and be active. Sitting in one position throughout your entire life is literally killing you. You need to move, and you need to stop coming up with excuses not to move. You learned to walk as a baby, why throw away that knowledge? To ride a scooter? Give us a break.

6. Volunteer for a cause you support

Here’s a win-win-win situation. Yes, we put three ‘wins’ because you actually win in a number of ways. Go to your local volunteer center and browse where you could be useful with your talents. And even if you have absolutely no talents, what does it matter? Anyone can volunteer, anyone can find a way to be useful to the community. Share pamphlets, talk with lonely people, clean garbage, you know how to do these things, everybody does.

Not only will you be socializing with various kinds of people, but you will constantly have something to do. And doing = losing weight, so just do it. You might have the time of your life, and you might get to have invaluable experiences. Plus, you’re helping the people around you, so everyone will like you for that, and you will feel better about yourself, knowing that you are helping a cause you morally agree with.

7. Learn a craft

You get to smash things with other things, you get to assemble things with other things and you might just have an opportunity to sell whatever it is you made or hang it on a wall or something. Additionally, you would be constantly active, both physically and mentally, which is something people pay gold to have nowadays.

Learn how to weave baskets, or learn how to do carpentry, or learn how to make medieval arms and armor because that’s freaking cool. People will respect you for developing something from nothing and you will have loads of fun, this we guarantee. Also, everybody loves a craftsman. He’s the most useful guy in the entire village!

8. Wash your car, regularly

You wouldn’t believe how many calories you can burn just by washing your car every other day. The numbers are very high, and the main problem is that you’ve never even considered thinking about it. “Why would I bother to wash my own car if I can just drive it to Eddie’s and get it washed for me in 5 minutes for $10?” is a question you must never ask yourself. Unless you haven’t got the time to wash your car.

But check this out, if you spend just 30 minutes every week (that’s not even a whole hour!) keeping your car squeaky clean – you will burn 180 calories a week. That’s almost 9 and a half thousand calories a year. Give your car a 30-minute wash every week and by the time 10 years pass you’ll have lost about 27 pounds. Now imagine if you wash it three times a week, for an hour. Just imagine.

Plus, you save a decent amount of money. Just think about it.

9. Stretch while watching a movie

You’ve been in the office for eight hours, sitting in a relatively uncomfortable chair and now your back hurts like hell. You make a meal, gobble it down in a matter of minutes and you lean back in your fantastic couch to watch a movie before going to sleep. But no, you can’t, because your horrible posture at work is now taking its toll on your back. It still hurts and you can’t position yourself so that it doesn’t. You start to feel aggravated, switch off the movie and go to bed. NO!

Every 5 minutes while watching a movie, do a good, good stretch. Stretching will give you an instant burst of energy, it will help with straightening your back a little bit and getting rid of this annoying back pain. And don’t you dare say how stretching will “surely not help you.” Have you tried it? No. So don’t run away from it until you’ve tried it.

10. Do short stretches and exercises while flying

Are you a flyer? Not as in whether you have wings, but do you frequent the airplane transportation method? If yes, there are certain things you have probably never even considered trying out. These are a kind of mini exercises that any person can do while flying on an extremely boring flight that seems like it will never end.

First of all, sit so that your shoes are completely flat. Then slowly lift your heels as much as possible – hold this position for five seconds and then put them down again. Repeat this ten times and make sure that it’s your natural tempo and that you don’t go over your flexibility. If you feel sharp pains, take is easy. Then you can lift your feet so that only your heels remain down, same procedure. Lift your legs up and curl your feet in circular motion. Stretch your arms, contract your stomach muscles, you can do tons of things while sitting in that seat.

11. Dance, dance, dance

It doesn’t really matter if you have never taken a course in dancing or if you ever had anybody show you anything about the rules of dancing. The first rule of dancing is that there are no rules, everybody does what they feel like doing. Gather a group of friends, go into a bar and when you hear that one song that you absolutely love, stand up and do some moves, it doesn’t matter if you look like a windmill while doing it, it’s fun!

And not only that, dancing is like a combination of various small exercises packed into one movement. You don’t have to breakdance, at least begin with standing up and wiggling your hips a little bit. Then wave your arms around (like you just don’t care) and try doing a couple of jumps when the main bassline kicks in. Maybe you’ll get sweaty, but the calories will be gone for sure.

12. Do gardening

Not only is it rewarding and fun, it’s also extremely useful. You know what’s better than eating a full plate of healthy veggies? Eating a full plate of healthy veggies that you planted, took care of and harvested yourself! That way you know exactly where they came from, and you get this connection with nature that you have never even realized you needed.

So let’s do the math here. Gardening is a demanding activity and it comes in all shapes and sizes. You can grow fruits, flowers, vegetables, it’s your choice – whichever you choose, you will melt a serious amount of calories. If you spend as little as two hours per month gardening, you will burn more than twelve thousand calories a year. This amounts to seven pounds in two years. Seventy pounds in 20 years!

13. Get a table for table tennis. Table football works, too.

When playing table tennis, one would think that because you’re not moving too much you’re not burning a lot of calories. The truth is very far from that, really. On an average game, without stress and without overdoing it, you burn about 200 calories per hour. 200 calories per hour, people, come on! And it’s insanely fun. Another advantage is that it’s a two-player (or even a four-player) game, so the social aspect is there as well.

Table football also works. There’s less movement, sure, but at least you’re standing and focusing your mind on something other than munching snacks (nobody likes a greasy table football rod). There’s a possibility that you will buy a table for table tennis and never use it, but let’s face it – if you have friends that come over from time to time, they’re gonna bore you to death to bring it out at some point. And they sure as heck won’t let you just sit next to them and not play.

14. Use your car less

It’s really not necessary to take a car and drive to a supermarket that’s at the end of your street. You really shouldn’t use your car in cases like those, not only is it cost-inefficient, but it’s also a stupid reason to pollute Earth’s atmosphere even further. Get your shoes, put on some comfortable and casual clothes and take all the time in the world. Walk as slowly as you possibly can if you don’t want to sweat like a horse, it doesn’t matter – you’re still walking.

And not only that, but when you buy the things in the store, you have to carry them back. This is yet another simple exercise because your arms are doing some of the work as well. You will feel some calories being burnt for sure, even if you just go out to buy a 2l bottle of Coke.

16. Get a pet dog

No matter what kind of dog you would get, it’s always a huge responsibility to take care of something that lives, breathes, eats and communicates with you. Even if you are one of those people who toss a plate to your dog twice a day and that’s about it, in terms of you taking care of the pooch – you still have to toss the damn plate. And you have to pick it up later, which is at least something.

But let’s presume you’re one of the good people, that you would actually take care of your dog, love them and spend time with them on a daily basis. You gotta walk that dog, you gotta play with that dog, you really ought to go outside from time to time and buy stuff for that dog. You have to clean after your dog, you have to train your dog – all of these things consume time and energy, but more importantly, they consume calories.

 

17. Buy a pedometer (and actually use it)

Although we’ve already covered the need to be in frequent motion on a daily basis, we still feel that it would be right to mention this ingenious device. A pedometer (in case you’ve been living on another planet) is a portable, electronic device that measures how many steps you’ve made. It also calculates the distance of those steps and then gives you a rough estimate regarding the number of kilometers you’ve covered for the day.

Why is a pedometer important, you ask? Because it’s healthy motivation. Everybody pays attention to big numbers, it’s just the way our brains function. If you’re walking to your neighbor who lives down the street, it might seem like you haven’t done anything. But then you bring your pedometer with you and you realize that you’ve made 500 steps. That’s more than enough to get your body up and running.

18. Fix stuff around the house yourself

Don’t call the repairmen for every wee little thing that starts malfunctioning in your house. Got a leaking tap? Why not go online, check a couple of YouTube videos and try to fix it yourself? Get some tools from your local hardware store (try walking to the store), check everything that you learned and try doing it. If you fail – it doesn’t matter, you will learn after some time.

More importantly, you will burn tons of calories while doing it. You know how many sit-ups you have to do if you’re fixing something that’s under your sink? Dozens! And you never did sit-ups on your own, sat down, thought about it and said “Oh I really feel like doing some sit-ups.” Also, you will save tons of money, and whenever somebody learns a new skill, they widen their brain for more different skills. Long story short, you’ll be smarter, and don’t even bother telling us that you don’t want to be smarter.

19. Wear a weighted belt

This one’s a nice little hack for all people out there who want to do something with themselves, but still can’t be bothered to be part of the “exercising masses.” Well, that’s just the thing. You will be exercising half of the day…without actually feeling like your exercising. Sure, the effects are not the same like when you go to the gym and run on a treadmill for two hours but hey, it’s a start.

The beauty of this useful little gadget is that you basically forget that you even have it. You are forcing your body to carry a slightly bigger burden than it’s used to, and after a while you start to see the effects. It’s slow at first, but once you get used to it, you may even end up doing some workouts. You might just like the results and decide that it’s what you want to do.

20. Use a standing desk

Standing desks are like suspicious rumors for some people – they’ve heard about them, but they can’t really believe they are true. Well, standing desks are actually happening, and let us tell you something – they are phenomenal. You will feel more concentrated, more focused and you will burn some calories. In a nutshell, standing is way better than slouching in your presidential, leather chair.

Let us just get one thing straight. There are many topics on the Internet about how standing desks are actually dangerous for your health, how you shouldn’t use them, blah blah blah. It’s rubbish. You just have to ease into the transformation. You can’t sit for 15 hours a day and then stand for 15 hours a day, that’s downright impossible. You have to take breaks, and you mustn’t connect more than an hour or two of constant standing, especially if weight is an issue for you. Just take it easy, and let all things come naturally. Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.

21. Use smaller plates when eating (we’re serious here)

If you take a plate the size of a freaking watermelon, how do you expect not to put way too much food on it when you’re serving lunch or whatever? Not only that, but one of the main reasons some people use huge plates when eating is so that they don’t have to get up and pour twice, which is…just plain lazy and bad. Don’t think like that, this is your body we’re speaking about, something very, very important.

Take a smaller plate. It doesn’t have to be a cup plate, of course, we’re not here to tell you that you need to eat like a mouse, just take a slightly smaller plate than you usually use. Fill it up with whatever it is you’re eating, but when you finish with that plate (and make sure to chew your food, not swallow like a turkey), sit down for 5 minutes and don’t move. Then give some good thought about whether you really, really need another one. If you do, it’s ok, get up, pour some more food, sit back at the table and eat. At least you had to get up once more, so there’s that.