4 Ways to Get Activity in While at Home

By Meg Gallagher

Meg Gallagher is a strength coach, powerlifter, and fitness expert in Fort Worth, TX. She is the owner of Strong Strong Friends, an online strength community dedicated to getting a barbell in every woman’s hands.

If you’re working from home these days, then you might find yourself a bit more desk bound and itching to just… MOVE. Since you might be indoors more lately, a lot of us are missing our usual walks across the office parking lot, activity spent running errands on the weekend, or even those seemingly insignificant trips to the water cooler at the office.

Activities like these make up our NEAT, or non-exercise activity thermogenesis. NEAT makes up a lot of our caloric expenditure and general movement throughout the day. Things like cleaning, taking the stairs, brushing our teeth, and other regular tasks all use energy to complete. NEAT helps keep our calorie balance in check and gives us at least some of the movement we’re designed to do.

Although you might be used to a desk bound life anyway, confining our routines to just our homes might have us missing our usual movement even more than usual.

Here are 4 ways to increase your caloric expenditure at home and get you some of that much needed movement and NEAT back:

1.) Try a sit-stand desk or setup: Some studies have shown that users of stand-capable desks improved productivity compared to their seated counterparts. Even finding a way to adjust your workstation to standing during meetings can help increase NEAT.

2.) Schedule in walk breaks: Whether it be a walk first thing in the morning or right after dinner, find ways to stack a daily walking habit in with your existing routine. You could even try to replace the time you spend commuting to the office with time spent walking.

3.) Chores and housework: Home organization is a great way to keep yourself busy. While the main goal might be to get your house in order, don’t forget that movement doing laundry, vacuuming and washing the dishes all counts towards your NEAT.

4.) Netflix & stretch: Now is the perfect time to catch up on all your streaming platforms. While commercial breaks probably aren’t in the rotation, try a stretching routine (even on the floor) while enjoying your shows.