Being Physically Active at Home

Do you want .....

......To be healthier?? Increase your chances of living longer?? Feel better about yourself?? Sleep better at night?? Get around better?? If yes, then the best ways achieve all these are to Eat Healthy Diet and Regular Exercise :)

We all know that physical activity or Exercise is an important to be healthy and for our well-being. But many times it’s hard to find time for regular exercise. Lack of time is the main barriers that people say prevents them from being physically active on a regular basis.

There are numerous ways busy people can use to be more active at work place or at home.

If you are at home:

It's usually convenient, comfortable and safe to work out at home. Also when your children see you being active, it sets a good example for them and encourage them to be active too . You can combine or incorporate exercise with other activities, such as watching TV, doing household chores. If you buy exercise equipment, it's a one-time expense and other family members can use it. It's easy to have short bouts of activity several times a day. Try out some tips to be physically active if you are at home:- 

• Do housework yourself instead of hiring someone else to do it. Like cleaning the floor by leaning down, it is the best exercise to reduce your tummy.
• Work in the garden or mow the grass. Using a riding mower doesn't count! Rake leaves, prune, dig and pick up trash.
• Go out for a short walk before breakfast, after dinner or both! You can walk the dog ;)
• Walk or bike to the corner store instead of driving. Make a use of stairs instead of lift or elevators. Park your vehicle little farther from your destination like little away at the shopping mall and walk the extra distance. Wear your walking shoes and sneak in an extra lap or two around the mall.
• When walking, pick up the pace from leisurely to brisk and increase intensity. Choose a hilly route, which makes your heart pump more and increase it's efficiency.
• When watching TV, sit up instead of lying on the sofa. Or stretch. Better yet, spend a few minutes pedaling on your stationary bicycle or do some static stretching exercises like moving legs around, bending down etc. while watching TV. Throw away your video remote control. Instead of asking someone to bring you a drink, get up off the couch and get it yourself.
• Stand up while talking on the telephone or walk while talking on a phone.
• Stretch to reach items in high places and squat or bend to look at items at floor level.

How to know the hunger is Physical or Emotional???

This is very important thing to know when you really want to eat smart and avoid unnecessary weight gain. First let's understand, what does Physical Hunger and Emotional Hunger mean???

Physical Hunger is when you feel hungry because your body actually needs energy. While Emotional Hunger is when you just feel like eating because of emotions  like being alone or bored or while reading, watching movie etc.

Following are some differences between Physical and Emotional Hunger, which will help you to understand whether you really need to feed your body or you just need to RETHINK!!!

1. Physical hunger builds gradually while Emotional hunger develops suddenly.
2. Physical hunger builds a little at a time, It gets bigger the longer it's been since you last ate, especially occurs 3+ hours after a meal. & Emotional hunger occurs at random times.
3. Physical hunger can be temporarily offset by drinking water & Emotional hunger still persists after drinking a glass water. So you can drink a glass of water when you feel hungry and check it out.
4. Physical hunger strikes below the neck (i.e. growling stomach) while Emotional hunger occurs above the neck (i.e. a taste for ice cream).
5. Physical hunger goes away when you are full & Emotional hunger still persists after having a enough amount of food.
6. Physical hunger is satisfied with food & Emotional hunger leads to guilt after eating food as you know that you have eaten unnecessarily.
7. Physical hunger can be suppressed with stress or tensions while Emotional is activated with stress and hence sometimes you feel like eating chocolates or sweets when you are stressed.
8. Physical hunger enhances taste as real hunger stimulates the taste buds on our tongue while Emotional does not.
9. Physical hunger is increased with the smell or appearance of the food while Emotional hunger is not.

So, how to overcome it?? when you are stressed out just think "what do I feel?" Then ask yourself: What do I need to feel better? When you think about that, the answer won't always be that you need something to eat.

Connection between small frequent meals and Weight Loss!!!

Like every other year, most of us may have decided their new year resolutions like regular exercise, losing and maintaining weight, avoiding fats, giving up chocolates and ice creams and so on.  It's like giving ourselves another chance to make up for times when we goofed up or when things didn't go as planned. But before you put them into practice, I would like to bring a very important thing to your notice. There is one "HEALTH MANTRA" which will help you to lose weight to some extent and can be easily incorporated in our daily lifestyle i.e. "SMALL AND FREQUENT MEALS"

Why it is so important???

This is very important thing to know. Many people think that eating less is the key to lose weight, and go for crash diets but by thinking so you are simply starving your body. Let's make it simple, when there is a shortage of something, we store that things for emergency use, right? Our body acts like the same, when there is a shortage of food in the body by eating less or starving yourself, our body simply stores the food in the form of fat, because it doesn't know when it will be getting the next meal and ultimately your metabolic rate slows down as body does not want to spend calories due to shortage. So never ever starve yourself and go for crash diets which disturb your body metabolism.

So, what can we do???

Follow the simple things given below for better metabolism:

1. Do not keep longer gaps in between 2 meals.
2. Have at least 6-7 meals / day.
3. Break large meals into smaller ones and eat small and frequent meals. The breakage will be like this - Early Morning, Breakfast, Mid-Morning, Lunch, Evening, Late Evening, Dinner and Bedtime or Late Night.
4. Generally we consume 3 - 4 meals a day like Breakfast, Lunch , Evening and dinner. Try to fill the gaps in between with the other smaller meals like Early Morning, Mid-Morning, and Late evening.
5. Prefer a heavy breakfast, moderately heavy lunch and light dinner.
6. There are some healthy choices of smaller meals to fill the gaps like sprouts chat, fruits, healthy fats like almonds, walnuts, salad preparations, green tea etc.
7. Prefer to have a cup of warm milk (without sugar) before going to bed for a better sleep.

How does it help to lose weight???

• When you eat meals at short intervals, your body  uses every meal for energy purpose and does not store it in the form of fat.
• It will help you boost your metabolism, thereby help you to burn calories.
• When you eat small meals in between by the time of lunch or dinner you are not that much hungry to eat heavy meals.
• When you get habitual to this, there are lesser chances of tempting for unhealthy food choices.

So try it now and enjoy the results!!!!!

For more details: tejashreejoshi27@gmail.com

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  Written by

  Tejashree Joshi

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