When I got to my worst weight and level of health in my life, I hate to admit that I had gone so far down the road of unhealthy that I was actually incapable of doing any sort of vigorous exercise. Trying to lug my 115kg (around 250 lbs) ass around was not a pleasant thing and I was really embarrassed about it. It wasn't something that happened quickly, just like taking the weight off didn't happen quickly.
At that time in my life I went on jogs that were more like fast walks and while I am sure some people out there had some fun at my expense making fun of the fat guy that was going for a run, I knew that I had to ignore them and just get on with it.
- By the way if you are ever making fun of a fat person trying to better themselves via exercise you are a terrible person.
Anyway, Now that I am slimmer (still probably 4-5 kg off my ideal weight) I start to pay really careful attention to how many calories my activities burn and thanks to my Garmin watch that I talk about incessantly, I now know that simple things that all of us do, actually burns a lot more than you think.
This is me around 7 years ago and I am definitely not proud of it.
Anyway, i started using my Garmin watch to track every little thing that I do, not just the time spent in the gym or intentionally doing exercise. My job incorporates me working in many different buildings and many of them are just a km or two away from one another. So lately, just out of curiosity I have been tracking these activities that don't even seem like activities just to see what this tiny bit of motion actually does for me.
You can see that this is no sort of real distance, but it was one that I could have gotten a taxi for any my job pays for that... but instead, I just decided to leave a bit early and walk it instead. At no point was I trying to go fast but was just enjoying the sunny day that is still a bit cool because the temperature where I live is still quite cold at night but is turning into spring in the daytime.
You can see that my heart rate was nothing special, but it is about 30 BPM more than it would be if I was sitting at my desk.
Something that is important to understand about any caloric burn is that your body is ALWAYS burning calories simply by you being alive. The Garmin watch that I have can kind of figure this out for you if you dig a bit deeper.
Now you can see that even if I had stayed at my desk I would have burned 20 calories anyway, but by simply going and walking a mere 1 km , which didn't take anything out of me, I burned 4 times the amount of calories that I normally would have done.
It only took around 18 minutes to do as well. I happen to recall some old commercials about people taking the stairs instead of the escalator and what not and honestly, if you are overweight or let's face it, fat, like I was in the first picture, you can really do yourself a world of good by simply opting to walk instead of taking a taxi. I think that this is an option for most people out there.
The most common excuse I hear from people who don't exercise is that they "don't have time" and even though this might be very true for people with kids or that have heavier workloads than I do, do you really expect us all to believe that you don't have 18 minutes to do a short walk?
Hell, thanks to technological advancements with spotify and podcasts you can actually use this time to learn something as well or to listen in on whatever it is that you find entertaining.
I am slightly injured right now so I can engage in anything too intense right now but there is nothing stopping me from going for walks and you really should be thinking the same.
Fitness doesn't have to be something that you have to put on a different outfit for nor does it need to be something that you feel like you have to lie down and rest for hours afterwards. We all have the opportunity to take the manual route instead of always using modern conveniences like taxis.
When I see stats like this I am upset at myself for all the times that I chose to take the taxi rather than walk and that attitude was just one of the many reasons why I ended up as fat as I have ever been in my life. I have no no desire or intention of ever returning to that state. The little things DO matter!
I'm no expert. But I did lose over 50 lbs by making small and permanent changes to my lifestyle and I think that almost anyone else can do the same