How do you optimise your activity levels then?
As I like to say to my clients, it is all about the little 1% decisions. Most of them are simple to do but the key is doing them regularly.
We have spoke about the NEAT factor before and the calories you burn just doing normal activities, well this topic is very closely linked to that.
It’s about making opportunities to be active. It is about seeking ways to optimise the activity in your environment. It is also about aiming to be the exact opposite of sedentary. Sedentary lifestyles involve little or no physical activity.
A person living a sedentary lifestyle is often sitting or lying down whilst they are engaged in activity like reading, watching TV, playing computer games etc. A lifestyle like this can potentially lead to many issues both mentally and physically. So, we need to be doing everything possible to do the exact opposite.
There are many options, but I often recommend the following to some degree with my clients:
Stand up when you make phone calls.
Remember we are just trying to make the little 1% differences here. Not only will you sound livelier and more awake when you stand up, but you also burn more calories when you stand compared with sitting down.
Also, the core must work harder when you stand up so embrace it and enjoy all the benefits standing gives you.
Whenever my phone goes off, I stand up and take the call, you could say I am now conditioned to do it. More on conditioning another week.
Clean the house every day in some way
Cleaning the house keeps you active and keeps you mobile. You have to bend down, stand up, twist around, get under tables, reach up high and all these are quite primal movement based so they are actually really good for you. You don’t need to be really over the top and spend hours cleaning but just spending 5/10 minutes a day can add to your movement expenditure.
Take a 20-30 minute walk every day. I posted a video last week on my mental health page via Facebook.
The page is “Time4Change, down but not out” if you are interested in watching it. I discussed walking to Tesco and grabbing my lunch.
The walk was 10 minutes there and 10 minutes back so didn’t take long and left me energised afterwards for the rest of the day. You can either do a block of walking or separate it up into smaller periods such as five minutes.
It really is up to you.
Avoid lifts and escalators.
Again, you may find this last one not that relevant to you but if you work in an office block or live in a block of apartments then this method could be huge for you.
It could be a game changer. No one could accuse you of skipping leg day either could they?
You now have four simple methods to get you moving more and optimise your activity levels to help you be the best version of yourself.
What you do with that infor-mation is up to you but that’s what it comes down to isn’t it??
It’s all about YOU.
Have a great week, aim to be as active as possible and let’s keep optimising YOU to be truly, truly AWESOME.
Chris Hunt is the Head Mind, Body and Life Coach at The FUNdaMENTAL Coach based out of The Hub, Molly Millars Lane, Wokingham
