31 Ways to Burn More Calories During Your Day

Are you looking for easy ways to burn more calories during your day? Whether you’re at work, at home, or even at the gym, these 31 ideas can help!

1. Do lunges to and from the bathroom each time you have to go.

2. Take work meetings on the go, i.e. walk laps around the building instead of sitting in a conference room

3. Sit on the floor more – to watch TV, play games, snuggle with your dog, you name it. You engage more muscles when you have to hold yourself up as well as each time you rise to your feet.

4. Lower the temperature in your home to cue your body to burn more brown fat to keep you warm (and save money!).

5. Do 10 squats every hour on the hour.

6. Park further from your destination and add tons of steps onto your trek into a store, restaurant, etc.

7. Take the stairs instead of an elevator . . . always.

8. Use trekking poles on your daily walk or hike and engage both upper and lower body muscles to burn more calories.

9. Carry more weight on your next hike by adding books or water bottles to your backpack.

10. Incorporate more hills and inclines into your regular jog.

11. Turn one task into many. For example, carry groceries in one bag at a time or turn a big load of laundry into multiple baskets that have to be carried separately to get folded.

12. Carry a reusable water bottle. You’ll find yourself both filling it more often and having to walk to the restroom more often.

13. Try listening to an audiobook. Researchers found in one study that participants who could only listen to tempting audiobooks at the gym were 51 percent more likely to go to the gym.

14. Do 10 minutes of heart-pumping calisthenics before you get going in the morning (think lunges, plank, jump squats, etc.).

15. Listen to faster music while you workout. Researchers have found that songs with tempos upwards of 120 to 140 beats per minute unknowingly trigger people to workout harder than they might otherwise because, in part, the music reduces your perception of exertion.

16. Exercise while you veg. Turn commercial breaks into quick workouts or use pedal exercisers or grip strengtheners while you binge the latest hit on Netflix.

17. Weave more strength training into your cardio. Use resistance bands or dumbbells to complete at least 20 minutes of strength training on top of your daily cardio. Muscle burns more calories than fat and strength training helps you grow more muscle.

18. Add resistance to everyday activities. Hold a medicine ball between your knees during a plank or wall-sit, wear ankle or wrist weights during a walk, etc.

19. Snack healthier and make your basal metabolic rate (the rate at which you burn calories while at rest) even more powerful. Carrot sticks and celery with hummus, fresh fruit, low-fat cottage cheese, dried seaweed, strips of bell pepper, whole grain rice cakes, you get the idea.

20. Chew more gum. One study found that participants burned more calories when they chewed gum following a controlled breakfast.

21. Ditch the office chair and opt instead to stand at a standing desk while you work at a computer or alternate sitting on a bouncing stability ball. The essential idea is to keep moving.

22. Find effective methods for relieving your stress. Stress can not only affect mood but diminish your desire to exercise and eat well. Try stress-busting techniques like getting a massage, aromatherapy, or meditation.

23. Laugh more. Genuinely laughing at something funny has been shown to increase energy expenditure by 10 to 20 percent. So go ahead and watch that hilarious cat video!

24. Shorten your rest times during your workouts.

25. Run outside. The air resistance runners encounter outdoors actually helps burn more calories than if you were to run on a treadmill.

26. Dance like no one’s watching to your favorite song in the morning – it will help you wake up, get your heart rate going and loosen your muscles and joints.

27. Cook your dinner instead of ordering in. You’ll burn more calories preparing your meal and probably make something healthier than the fast food you would have ordered.

28. Cut your public commute short. If you ride a public bus or train to work, get off a stop early and walk the rest of the way.

29. Don’t let technology do it for you. Move more by simply avoiding technological short-cuts, i.e. go grocery shopping instead of ordering groceries, get up to change your thermostat instead of using your app, etc.

30. Stand up every time you take a phone call and stay standing until you hang up.

31. Practice deep breathing and crunching your core muscles every time you are stopped at a red light.