Journal of Healthy Living

Microfitness Exercises: Little Nuggets of Body Joy

In another life I’m a personal finance blogger, which means I write a lot about dollars and cents and saving and all that wonderful jazz. Well, personal finance and fitness are very very similar. In personal finance, one of the mantras is “spend less than you earn.” If you follow that rule, you’ll accumulate money. In fitness, it’s the same mantra except it’s “eat fewer calories than your body burns.” If you follow that rule, you’ll not accumulate more fat. There are plenty of parallels between the two but today I want to talk about a personal finance idea known as snowflaking (or micropayments, depending on how cool you want to sound).

Snowflaking is making small payments towards a debt or towards savings whenever you can. It’s the idea that “snowflakes,” however small they may be, will eventually accumulate into a nice “snowball.” How does this apply to fitness and weight loss? Microfitness exercises.

Going to gym can often seem like an insurmountable task. You have to change, you have to get into the car, you have to drive over and spend an hour or two or whatever there, then you come back, shower, change, etc etc. While it’s really not that bad, it’s certainly a bigger task than just pounding out a few push ups or cranking out a few sit-ups. My suggestion is that rather than just keeping all your exercise for the gym, start doing little things during the day to improve your fitness. Here are a few ideas for micro-exercises:

• Pushups - Do 10-20 pushups during the day, enough to get your blood pumping but not so much that you break out in a sweat or hit muscle exhaustion.
• Sit-ups - Crank out a few sit-ups, again enough to work your abs but not so much that you start sweating a ton.
• Take a ten minute walk - If you’re sedentary most of the day, this will help get the blood flowing, burn a couple calories, and give you a break. Some people take smoke breaks, you take anti-smoke breaks.
• Stretch - Touch your toes, arch your back, give yourself a little break during the day and stretch a little. This will improve your flexibility if you do it regularly and can take only a few minutes to do.
• Hit the stairs - Walk up a few flights at a brisk pace and enjoy the slight burn you feel in your legs, let your legs know that you’re thinking about them even though you’re on your butt all day!

There are plenty more but those should give you a nice head start during the day. A few extra calories a day that you can burn through small microfitness exercises and you’ll have fewer calories packed onto you.