I am always amazed when I come home from a trip to China at how much exercise I get when I am there. One of the keys to that is that I do not have a car, and hence if I want to go somewhere, I walk. Even when I walk to the park in the morning to exercise with my friends, it takes me about 20 minutes and is more than one mile.
I know that when I am home and working in the office, if I do not work at my exercise, I can end up with a 2,000-step day. That is 8,000 steps below where I should be to just stay at the weight that I am. I always like to talk to very busy people and see how they work in a little time for themselves.
If finding a block of time to devote to exercise is difficult, you can always find small moments to slip in extra steps. For instance, a recent travel day canceled my gym time. It was a perfect opportunity to turn my wait time into walk time.
At the airport, I had several minutes to walk around the gate area before my flight. After landing, I had to wait for my hotel shuttle so I strolled up and down the sidewalk, keeping an eye on my luggage until the shuttle came. I actually clocked a mile.
Turning everyday moments into fitness opportunities—staying active with simple walks, whether on a trip or during a busy day.
Relaxing in my room that evening, I watched a TV program. Each time a commercial came on, I hopped out of my chair and walked up and down the hall. By the end of the two-hour show, I had clocked another mile. The double benefit was the thrill of missing the commercials!
I shared this experience with a hypnotherapist friend, who told me creative exercise stories about three of his clients. His first client lived on the twenty-third floor of a high-rise. She started exercising after work by taking the elevator to the eighteenth floor and then walking the rest of the way up to her apartment. Each week she would drop down a floor until she was walking all the way up from the fourth floor of the building.
His second client, a woman with small children, lived in a two-story house and decided that each time she had to go up or down the stairs, she would do so six times before beginning her task. Both clients were successful in losing weight by creating maximum exercise in a limited time.
His third client took her fifteen-minute work break every day outside in good weather and would walk around the very large building. She also went out for fifteen minutes after lunch. She told him that if she didn’t take advantage of those few minutes, she would never get any exercise.
I recently took a five-hour road trip from Salt Lake City to St. George, Utah. There happened to be a town about every sixty miles. In earlier times, the towns were laid out that way, since that is how far an oxen-pulled wagon could travel in a day. I exited at several of the towns and got out to take a five-minute walk to keep myself awake and alert.
