Did you know you can use your downtime to lose weight? If your weight seems to be stuck on a plateau in spite of incorporating exercise and a healthy diet into your routine consider whether the amount of your downtime is due for an adjustment. Use these tips to reduce your downtime and jump start your weight loss goals.
Has something changed in your life that created this time?
Examine the changes in your life that contribute to increased downtime. Which can be sudden or gradual. Such as when children get older and begin attending school. It can be from the loss of a job. Even the transition from commuting to work to working from home.
Is this downtime temporary?
Consider whether your increased downtime is seasonal. Like when children transition from being home for the summer and then return to school. Or is this more permanent? Such as when children leave for college. In order to determine whether the changes you make to your schedule should be temporary or more permanent.
Replace daily activities that required you to be up and about with other activities
While exercise duration and intensity is essential for overall health, the activities that require you to be up and about such as caring for children throughout the day in addition to maintaining a household use calories that are no longer being used when these functions ease or disappear. In order to replace the time you spend being active, consider incorporating new activities such as gardening or painting your home, or simply walking around your neighborhood to remain active.
Try getting up and out of the house
If your downtime has increased because of loss of a job, consider doing your online job hunting at the library rather than sporadically checking out opportunities on your computer all day long which will keep you sitting at your computer working less efficiently for longer periods of time.
If you’ve got more downtime because you lost your job, include out-of-the-house efforts to find employment such as going to job fairs which will keep your body moving.
Balance exercise with lost activity
Consider increasing the amount of time you spend exercising each day to make up for less activity outside of your workouts. Adding five minutes at a time to your current workout can be an easy way to incorporate this adjustment.
Try something new to fill your time
Plan on spending a similar amount of time on new tasks as you spent on former more active tasks, such as cleaning or reorganizing your kitchen during times that you formerly spent preparing meals.
Try to incorporate new active goals into your routine such as taking a class at a gym or going to a park and hiking a trail or riding your bicycle.
Nothing happens overnight
Don’t expect instant results from filling in your downtime with additional activities because these activities don’t use as many calories as an exercise routine.
Don’t let the calories creep up
Carefully watch how many calories you’re consuming during downtime, whether it’s time you spend at your new at-home office or it’s calories you consume watching television.
Bottom line, replace missing activities with new ones
Your inability to lose weight in spite of healthy diet and exercise may be from an increase in your downtime. Use the tips above to incorporate changes into your daily routine to replace activities that formerly filled your time.
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