Boost Your Energy With Exercise Snacks

The Best Substitute for Junk Food is an Exercise Snack

I snack all day. Raisins, hummus, leftover Brussels sprouts—I’m eating all day. If there’s candy nearby, I’ll probably eat it. That’s why I also do exercise snacks.

At one job I had, I sat near the entrance and my friend sat near the vending machine that was subsidized by the company. Basically, it sold every candy bar or bag of chips at 25 cents each. After a while, management reorganized the office and I ended up near the vending machine and my coworker sat by the elevator. In a shockingly short time, she lost ten pounds and I gained eight.

Clearly, I had to come up with a better strategy for coping with stress. Nowadays, I don’t just snack on food; I snack on exercise. Each day, I try to fit in at least three exercise snacks.

Exercise Snacks        

One of the great benefits of working from home is that when I need a pick-me-up, I can do a mini-workout. None of these physical snacks takes more than five minutes, but the boost they give me lasts an hour or more. (Full disclosure: I still eat plenty of snacks, but the healthy kind.)

Some of my favorite exercise snacks:

• Posture exercises against the closet doors
• Arm-weights during a conference call
• Butt exercises standing next to a dining-room chair
• Push-ups against the counter while my lunch is heating up
• Shadow boxing in the entryway to rev my heartbeat and tone my core
• Taking the stairs (I live in a tall building)

Linda Hamilton, I am not, but it keeps bat wings and butt-drop at bay.                                    

The Benefits of Mini Workouts

A study published by the Obesity Society discovered that a group of obese people who did 12 short five-minute workouts each day had the same amount of appetite controlling protein in their blood as those who exercised one hour each day in one chunk. But the mini-workout group saw an extra benefit: on average, they said they felt 32 percent fuller during the day.

You don’t need to do 12 workouts to reap benefits. Anything that improves flexibility or tones muscle is better than doing nothing in my book. Getting in the habit of doing a little bit more exercise though out the day makes you more conscious of what choices you are making to stay healthy.

Exercise snacks work! Even before I read this study, I’d turned to mini workouts as a way of boosting my energy during the day without resorting to sugar and caffeine. At other times, I’d get excited about an idea or stressed about a phone call and used physical activity to bring me back to a calm place. Pick me up or calm me down, exercise snacks worked both ways.

Fix Your Weak Spots

I embarrassed myself at Blues Fest recently. After sitting on the ground for a couple hours, I tried to rise up from a kneeling position and grabbed my friend for support, nearly taking him down with me. This made me realize that as a relatively healthy person, I still had weak spots that needed to be addressed.

The next day, I did a quick inventory: the knees and ankles were stiff and my grip was weak. It was time to add more mini workouts to my day.

Getting a Grip

The grip issue was an easy fix. I bought an adjustable hand-squeezing device at Five Below for $3. I lowered the tension and devised several methods for squeezing different combinations of fingers. Within days I could open jars more easily. Then I dialed up the tension again so that I can become even stronger!

Take a Knee

Lunges and squats weren’t bendy enough for the kind of movement my knees needed to do. For example, my neighborhood library is a new facility designed for people in wheelchairs. This means that most of us library patrons have to bend down to search for books because all the bookshelves stop at chest height. It’s hard to read titles when your head is upside down. I needed to be able to crouch down, look at book titles on the bottom shelf, then rise gracefully. Doing lunges between the stacks was not going to cut it.

I started with the most basic goal: I was going to get down on one knee. That’s it. Not get up, just get down there and haul myself up somehow. It was hard, people! I’d successfully avoided crouching for decades. I thought about my octogenarian neighbor who races around after her grandchildren with ease, crouching on one knee to pull a t-shirt over a toddler’s head. Squatting down to console a bruised fairy princess. I could do this, right?

Was Barbie Arthritic?

Remember the click, click, click of a Barbie doll’s knees when you bent her into position? That was me. The first morning of my new fitness routine, I got down on one knee, heroically hauled myself up by gripping onto the dresser and a doorknob, then lowered myself down on the other knee. It took days just to get me knees and ankles to bend. There was pain and weird popping. Five dips per side every day was all I asked of myself. I dreaded it more than a full workout.

It took weeks before I could get up and down with only a little assistance from the furniture. Graceful? No. Functioning? Yes.

The Moment of Truth

A month later, a group of teenagers sprawled among the large stone blocks that terraced the lakefront where I was taking a sunset walk. My choices were to descend the big stone blocks to the water, turn around and slink back the way I came, or climb up one block to the top. The obvious choice was to go up and pass them, but for me it was a test.

This. Was. My. Moment.

I knew my limits; I wasn’t going to hop up in a single bound. So I knelt onto the stone, took a deep breath, then almost gracefully rose to my feet.

The teenagers noticed nothing…which was my goal. I resisted the urge to fist pump the air.

Office Exercise Snacks

Am I the only person who has been caught exercising in the office pantry? To me, microwaving lunch is a great time to do some push-ups against the counter or some side leg lifts. Even if you feel self-conscious about doing fitness at work, it is still possible to sneak exercise snacks. 

Take a Walk

A company in Nebraska brought me in to do some training a few years ago and the students were the most fidgety group I’ve ever taught. Why? Because the company had issued Fitbits to every employee and the departments competed against each other for most steps walked. Some people walked around the room on breaks, others stepped in place while chatting– it was great! At lunch, I sneaked out for a walk around the parking lot and ran into the whole class taking a stroll.  

You can take a walk around the block if you work in a city. Or around the parking lot if you’re in the burbs. If you go out to lunch, make a wide detour around the block on your way there and again on your way back. In winter, wear sensible boots and a down coat so you can relish those minutes of sunshine you wouldn’t otherwise get. If you can grab a walking buddy, even better.

Dumbbells at Your Desk

I used to work with a woman who kept ten-pound dumbbells in her cubicle for those long conference calls or when she was waiting for background jobs to process. She was petite, feminine, and very buff. If you don’t mind looking a little weird, you can keep light hand weights at your desk. I use two-pound weights at my desk for the lulls when students are doing activities during webinars. Of course, it’s super awkward if I don’t mute my phone and they hear my breathing, which happened once.

Keep it simple. You don’t need to do any exercises that can’t be done while wearing normal clothes.

Use the Stairwell as Your Mini Gym

Chicago has dramatic winters to say the least. Which means a walk around the block isn’t always an option. When I worked downtown, I used the stairwells as a mini gym. Believe me when I tell you that my legs never looked better.

Climb Stairs

Heading to a meeting? Take the stairs if you are a few floors away. Be sure to take your badge or fob with because some buildings prevent access to the stairwells from street level. 

Also, some companies require a badge to enter their floor from the stairwell. On your way out, check beside the door on your floor to see if requires a badge for re-entry. If there are multiple companies in your building, scout which ones allow you access and plan your hike from there.

Start small and build up. If you climb four floors on your break, set a target to reach six floors by the end of the next week. Or start by walking down then taking the elevator up. In the beginning it’s easy to be overambitious, but there’s no shame in taking the elevator back if it keeps you motivated to try again.

Calf Raises

Sitting at your desk causes blood to pool in your lower legs. To keep your circulation going, step into the stairwell and do toe raises. They make your calves look great, too! Kick off the dress shoes and step on the edge of the stair. Sparkpeople has a simple illustration of calf raises and here’s a fancy version.

People with arthritis need to keep their toe and ankle joints flexible and improve their balance. Here is a nice, slow version of toe raises for people with arthritis.

Step Ups

While you’re in the stairwell, do some step ups. Or save them for a separate “snack”. The Mayo Clinic Step-Up Exercise video explains good form. Basically, you step up with one foot, bring the other one up to meet it, then step down. Switch the first foot and repeat. These gave me amazing legs when I did them regularly. Hmm. Maybe I should add them to my snack menu.

Upper Body Workouts in the Office

Ivy Exec lists several options for exercising at your desk. The first set of exercises include shoulder shrugs and neck rotations that can be done without drawing too much attention to yourself. Many of these exercises could also be done while belted in an airplane seat when travelling.

• Neck rotations
• Shoulder shrugs
• Gluteal squeezes
• The ladies can throw in a few Kegels as well
• Shoulder blade pinches

Find an empty conference room or close your office door for the more advanced mini exercises:

• Chair squats
• Tricep dips
• Wall sits
• Side leg raises

I can’t find the exact arm video that I memorized and practice, but here’s a great one from FitSugar for arm exercises you can do standing up with no weights I suggest practicing at home before trying this at work unless you want to risk a passerby in the hallway hearing “Oh yeah! Eight more!”

I use two-pound weights and follow a Tracy Anderson arm workout that I can’t find anymore. As a substitute, this Tracy Anderson go-to arm workout can be modified for the desk. 

Work Your Abs in Work Clothes

As you can imagine from the state of my knees, I dislike exercises that need to be done on the floor. Plus, they’d be super awkward at the office. Fortunately, you can do an ab workout while standing. There is a mirror wall in my entryway near my desk that I use to check my form while exercising.

Here are some great abdominal exercises that can be done standing up:

• Punches
• Standing marches
• Side bends
• Twists

Conclusion

Do I do all of these exercises every day? No. Do I do all the abdominal exercises in one shot? Definitely not. I do exercise snacks. Maybe I do the punches and side bends. Then I get back to work before I lose my focus. The next day I change which exercises I do. The goal is not to get a complete workout during my workday, instead, my objective is to replace food with fitness. 

Every little bit helps.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can take on fitness issues when you retire because poor health choices tend to get worse when neglected. You don’t want to be stiff and winded on that first post-retirement trip to Cozumel.

What exercise snacks do you do?