If I told you there was a way to lose weight without working out, would you be interested?
I hope so, because I am about to do just that.

At your typical gym induction, you are given a plan to work out for one hour, which includes warming up and cooling down and you are be told that three times a week is a good start. Even if we bump that up to five times, that is still only five hours of structured exercise per week. But, when you consider there are 168 hours in a week, five hours of exercise a week is less than 3% of your available time. I think we can do better. Don’t get me wrong, I want you to keep your gym sessions, your bootcamp classes and your Saturday morning Parkrun.

What I really want is for you to get more Incidental Exercise.
This is non structured physical activity such as standing, walking from A to B, carrying, gardening, house work etc. The exciting thing is that there are myriad opportunities for exercise during your normal day which require little or no planning at all. Making slightly more active choices throughout your day adds up to many hours of calorie burning exercise each day and many many hours each week.

Here are just a few ideas that just about anyone can start doing immediately.

1. Take the stairs instead of the lift (elevator).

2. Walk on the escalator instead of standing still.

3. Walk or cycle to the train station or to your workplace.

4. Get off a tube stop early and walk to your destination.

5. Get off two tube stops early as you get fitter (see where I’m going with this one?)

6. Get a stand up desk to turn your woking hours into fitness time.

7. Instead of emailing a colleague, get up and walk over to have that conversation.

8. Park at the far end of the carpark instead of right outside the door.

9. Stand on the tube or bus rather than sitting on your bottom.

These are all excellent ways to increase your overall activity level, making you fitter, stronger and raising your metabolic rate (burning more calories) without actually working out. This has been shown to be one of the best ways to lose weight and keep that weight off. You do not need any special equipment, no warm up or cool down required and you won’t even sweat.

You may remember from an earlier blog article How To Be A Better Fat Burner that doing more easy aerobic activity makes you better at burning fat. So, lets go looking for Incidental Exercise wherever we can find it.

If you have a Fitbit or other activity tracker (head over to the Shop to check out more) then you may have already been bitten by the step-counting bug. These devices are worn like a wrist watch or bracelet and help you to see how active you are. Your smart phone may have a Health App that tracks your steps and other data. As you watch the numbers going up with every active choice you make you will find yourself getting hooked.

You can start today. If you park on the street, park a road away so that you add a couple of minutes’ extra walking to the beginning and end of your day. Do this with a few shopping bags and you’ve got double the benefit.

Dr. James Levine M.D. PhD is a leading researcher and author on weight loss and his area of special interest is incidental exercise. Click the link in the picture below to checkout his book.

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