Fitness
5 Things You Can Do Every Day to Burn More Calories
There’s no getting around it. In order to lose weight, you need to burn more calories or take in fewer calories. Taking in fewer calories involves eating less (calories) and making healthy meal choices. Burning more calories involves working your body more. But don’t be scared, working your body doesn’t mean going to the gym or even exercising. It just means that you should make your body work incrementally harder, even by just a little bit. So with that said, here are five ways you can burn more calories each day by making your body work just a little harder:
1) Get off your butt!
Whenever you’re on the bus or the train or waiting in the bank or the doctor’s office, fight the urge to take a seat. Instead, just stand. According to fitness experts, standing up burns 36 more calories than simply sitting down. Standing literally helps you burn a lot of calories, and what’s even better is that you aren’t doing much to get those calories burning. Also, if you really want to accelerate the weight loss process, you can fidget while standing. Bouncing your knees and drumming your knees can help you burn as much as 360 calories a day. Who knew such seemingly useless motions can actually help you shed weight?
2) Walk the way to where you’re going.
Walking has plenty of benefits. It not only saves you money, but it also goes a long way with regard to making you burn more calories. Walking to your destination, whether it’s a school or the office, is such a huge help. If your school or office is far away from home, try alighting a few buses stops away from the place, and walk from there instead. Spending even as short as 30 minutes on walking could get you to burn more calories. If you want to take it up a notch, try the speedier form called power walking. By moving your legs and arms in a faster tempo, you could burn additional calories in just half an hour.
3) Conquer the stairs!
While technological innovations are indeed helpful, they tend to lead to sedentary lifestyles, especially in the workplace. If you’ve never taken the stairs to your floor, then it is high time that you develop the habit. Climbing several flights of stairs before and after work can work wonders on your weight as well as your cardiovascular health. In just five minutes of climbing up and going down the stairs, you can immediately burn 144 calories. Remember not to overexert yourself. Climbing the stairs all the way to the 18th floor could be too much for someone who’s just starting the routine. As you build your endurance and your body gets used to the task, you can increase the number of flights of stairs you tackle every day.
4) Do your household chores.
Instead of relying on someone else to take care of the household chores, you should take the chance to burn more calories by doing them all by yourself. Household chores, while they can be tedious at times, provide an opportunity for you to get rid of the calories and fats that are weighing you down. To further convince you about the merits of doing household chores, here’s a quick rundown on the number of calories you can burn by doing a particular chore:
- Sweeping the Room – 28 calories
- Folding Clothes – 72 calories
- Cooking Dinner – 74 calories
- Washing the Car – 140 calories
- Mopping the Floor – 153 calories
- Mowing the Lawn (no riding mower, please) – 162 calories
- Raking the Leaves – 171 calories
- Shoveling Snow – 202 calories
5) Play with the kids.
If you’ve got kids or if you have young siblings, simply playing with them daily will increase the number of calories you’re able to burn. Get physical with the kids. Engage them in a game of tag, basketball, or any Nintendo Wii game. Unleashing the inner child in you will not only lead to quality bonding time with the kids, but it will also help you burn as much as 137 calories in as short as 10 minutes.
Aside from the five methods above, there are a lot of other things you can do to burn more calories each day. As long as you are constantly moving and not remaining sedentary, you are helping your body burn more calories. So keep that body moving and you might be surprised at the amount of weight you can lose within just a couple of months.
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