In this final week of the fitness sub-chapter, we’ll build some environments for automatically maintaining lifelong healthy fitness levels.

Good health does not demand regular strenuous exercise or serious expenses on gym memberships and equipment. In fact, most fitness actions are relatively easy. All we need to do is turn them into habits. 

So, let’s run through a typical day and scan over several simple little fitness habits that can be maintained with little or no effort.

The morning

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I must once again advocate for some early morning movement. This is an excellent way to kick-start the body and get some exercise as an added bonus.

It doesn’t need to be long. It doesn’t need to be hard. I just needs to be. Prioritizing movement as a fixed part of your morning routine cements it as a habit surprisingly quickly.

Next, we have the daily commute. If there is any chance you can use some muscle power here, jump at this chance for free exercise combined with huge financial savings. 

It may seem hard initially, but once you get used to it, it simply becomes the new normal. After 11 years of commuting by bike, a daily car commute in rush hour just sounds terrible to me. Getting yourself totally used to travelling by muscle power in this way is incredibly valuable. 

The work day

Chances are that you have a job where you sit at a desk all day long. The first step is to get into the habit of using every opportunity for walking around. See the previous post for some examples. 

A fitness app like Google Fit can help a lot by tracking your steps and move minutes. This quickly turns into a fun game to see how much you can move as you go through your normal day. A fitness tracker with a feature to buzz when you’ve been sitting for too long is another very useful tool. This post offers some basic fitness tech advice. 

A greater focus on motion can cause you to talk more to colleagues, have more effective meetings, and enjoy higher energy levels for higher productivity. It’s a genuine win-win. 

The afternoon and evening

After hopefully using some muscle power on your commute back home, there is one key habit you must break: the tendency to plop down in front of the TV with a bowl of unhealthy snacks. 

Instead, see if you can replace it with some habits involving motion. Go for a little stroll to process the happenings of your work day, take the kids (or just yourself) to the park, spend time on a physical hobby, do a little bit of gardening, make some food instead of ordering takeout, play some handyman around the house. Anything involving a bit of movement will do. 

When the evening comes, a little bit of gentle movement to wind down is another great idea. Stretching or yoga work very well for this purpose. 

Become a little more mindful

Opportunities for automatic exercise are all around us, we just need to be open to them. If we let them in, they become habits very quickly. 

So, open your mind to all these possibilities and give them a go. Then watch you daily step count gradually climb on Google Fit 🙂