If your company is one of the many that has migrated to a work-from-home or hybrid model, you’re spending more time than ever in your home. This can lead to bad habits, like lounging, staying inside, or developing a sedentary lifestyle, which could have negative impacts on your health.
Especially since the pandemic took the past few years hostage, it’s easy to feel like you perineally live in a cave. A treadmill desk can help you get moving throughout the day, but you don’t need to go for such an expensive option to burn more calories at home. There are simple but effective ways to break up the workday that will leave you feeling healthier and happier.
The reality is, a sedentary lifestyle is no joke and is something to best be avoided. According to the National Library of Medicine, it can lead to a variety of different health risks and adverse health effects including:
- Elevated all-cause mortality
- CVD mortality
- Cancer risk
- Risks for metabolic diseases such as DM, HTN, dyslipidemia
- Musculoskeletal diseases such as knee pain and osteoporosis
Also, it can have a negative impact on your mental health, increasing levels of depression, anxiety, and despair about your work or home life. When both are mixed in one place, it can be challenging to find relief from monogamy.
Below is a breakdown of five ways to burn more calories at home, which will come with a slew of benefits for both your physical and mental health.
- Take Periodic Walks
Take a five-minute walk every hour to break up the day and your environment for a little while. These walks can help you get outside, which will burn calories and give you a dose of the sun, relieving you from all the screen time. This is good for your legs as well, and it can give you a boost of energy from the lull that comes with being inside all the time.
Sitting for long periods of time can heighten your risk for diabetes, obesity, depression, and other negative health conditions or diseases. If you can, take your work phone calls or meetings outside with you instead of doing them in your home office. This will improve your productivity, motivation, and overall mood throughout the workday.
- Use A Standing Desk
Standing while working is an easy and effective way to burn more calories while getting your work done at home. This will improve your energy levels by improving your circulation and delivering more oxygen to your brain. It will also help you burn more calories and lose weight compared to sitting. It will lower your risk of heart disease and other diseases, and is good for muscle and joint health.
In general, it will boost your attentiveness, posture, mood, productivity levels, and overall health. This is an easy way to make a change at home. If you don’t have a standing desk, try using a countertop to get started and give it a try.
- Use an Exercise Ball Instead of a Chair
A fitness ball will tone the muscles in your abdomen and legs as your body works to stay balanced versus lounging in a chair. This forces you to use better posture and helps to burn more stomach fat. This will also increase your lower back mobility and force you to improve your balance and stability.
If you’re intimidated by trying a workout ball during work hours, limit the amount of time you spend on it to a few minutes per hour, then gradually increase the time spent on the ball. This will get easier over time and you’ll find yourself feeling stronger and more confident as you earn money working from home.
- Take Brief Cardio Breaks
While this might feel silly at first, instead of taking some walks during the day, try doing quick bursts of cardio exercise to stretch out and get moving while on the clock. This could be doing some jumping jacks or using a jump rope for a few minutes here and there, or try doing some lunges when moving between rooms.
The Mayo Clinic states that brief aerobic exercises can lower the risk of the following health conditions:
- Obesity
- Heart disease
- High blood pressure
- Type 2 diabetes
- Metabolic syndrome
- Stroke
- Certain types of cancer.
- Try New Technologies
A recent wave of working from home has led to a niche market that sells items perfect for at-home fitness. These items come in the form of treadmill desks (which are exactly what they sound like) desk exercise bikes, standing desks, you name it.
With a little investment, you can take your at-home fitness habits to the next level and burn more calories than ever while earning money on the job. Constant, mindless peddling can allow you to burn more calories than standing without having to get up or move from your seat. This way you can have eyes on your work projects while getting a workout in at the same time.
These items can take some practice, but are scalable to what works best for you, be it a brief walk during the morning meeting or gradually burning more calories throughout the day.
Conclusion
Just because your work life and home life have married together, it doesn’t mean you are stuck in a sedentary-like lifestyle. There are easy ways to burn more calories while working than you would otherwise, either by taking simple and periodic walks or using an exercise ball or other equipment to provide you with some additional help.
Using some of these methods will not only burn more calories, which could help you lose weight, but they can also improve your mood, productivity, energy, and more. They’ll also lower your risk for obesity and other serious health conditions, like heart disease, stroke, and certain types of cancer.
Get ahead of the rut that can come with being at home all the time, and make an effort to make your quality of life better by burning some extra calories while you’re working from home. You’ll feel better both physically and mentally, and your work will reflect the improvement.
