How To Fit In 10 Minutes Of Exercise Into Your Busy Day

Experts recommend working out 45 minutes to an hour a day (30 minutes for beginners) for weight loss and fitness. But if you're like most women, you don't always have a block of 30 to 60 minutes a day to devote exclusively to doing your workouts.

Not sure how to implement exercise into your daily routine? Here are 15 ideas of some work-out type activities you may be able to work into your day-to-day schedule. If you can get in short bursts of activity, that will boost your metabolism as well as burn more calories. Remember, anything extra you can do a day, is more than you would have if you hadn't. Pick one of the choices from the below list, and keep it up for a week. See how you feel! You may surprise yourself.

Around the House

1. When you go outside to pick up your morning newspaper, take a brisk 5-minute power walk up the street in one direction and back in the other.
2.  If you're housebound caring for a sick child or grandchild, hop on an exercise bike or do a treadmill workout while your ailing loved one naps.
3.  Try 5 to 10 minutes of jumping jacks.
4.  Cooking dinner? Do standing push-ups while you wait for a pot to boil. Stand about an arm's length from the kitchen counter, and push your arms against the counter. Push in and out to get toned arms and shoulders.
5.  After dinner, go outside and play tag or shoot baskets with your kids and their friends.
6.  Just before bed or while you're giving yourself a facial at night, do a few repetitions of some dumbbell exercises, suggests exercise instructor Sheila Cluff, owner and founder of The Oaks at Ojai and The Palms, in Palm Springs, CA, who keeps a set of free weights on a shelf in front of her bathroom sink.

While Waiting

1.  Walk around the block several times while you wait for your child to take a music lesson. As your fitness level improves, add 1-minute bursts of jogging to your walks.
2.  Walk around medical buildings if you have a long wait for a doctor's appointment. “I always ask the receptionist to give me an idea of how long I have left to wait,” Cluff says. “Most are usually very willing to tell you.”
3.  While your son or daughter plays a soccer game, walk around the field.
4.  Turn a trip to a park with your child into a mini-workout for you. Throw a ball back and forth and run for fly balls.

At Work

1. Walk or ride a bike to work if you can. “I walked to work for months, 1 1/2 miles each way,” says Mary Dallman, PhD, professor of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, and she really saw results.
2.  If you dine out on your lunch hour, walk to a restaurant on a route that takes you a little bit out of your way.
3.  If you have a meeting in another building, leave 5 or 10 minutes early (or take some time afterward), and do some extra walking.

While Traveling

1. If you're traveling by car, stop twice a day for short, brisk walks and some stretching.
2.  During layovers at airports, avoid the mechanized “moving carpets” that transport travelers from concourse to concourse. “If you're in between flights, walk around the concourse as much as you can,” suggests Cluff.

Source: Prevention.com

Image Source: Roberto Milloch