Weekly Challenge: Week 5 - Take the Stairs

This week's challenge is all about making fitness a part of our everyday lifestyle.  Yeah, we get up at ungodly hours to workout.  We eat good food (usually).  We do other activities like running, swimming and biking.  However, to really have a solid, fulfilling and healthy life, we should think about our health and fitness all day, everyday.  We need to think about how we can improve our fitness not just during the hour or two of workouts that we do each day, but in EVERYTHING we do each day.

Thus, this week's challenge is Take the Stairs. 

It's really that simple.  If you need to go up, skip the elevator and take the stairs.  If there aren't opportunities in your daily life to take stairs, do other everyday activities that will both take advantage of the fitness gains that have been made and help build on them for the future.  These shouldn't necessarily interfere with your life, but be integrated into the things that you already do*.  It will get you thinking about your health, it will burn a few extra calories and help you to gain or maintain some functional fitness.  Here's a few more examples:

-You go to the grocery store, park in the back and walk the entire parking lot. 

-When you let the dog out, take him to the end of the block instead of the end of the yard. 

-Jog when you go down to the mailbox.

-Use a basket instead of a cart at the store.

They are simple things, but when you add them up over the course of a day or a week, they will make you stronger, leaner and healthier. 

And the best part is, it really isn't that hard. (that's what she said...sorry, couldn't resist!)

*Personal caveat - I work on the 25th floor of an office building and I wear a suit and wingtips to work almost everyday.  It is both impractical and impossible for me to walk the 25 flights of stairs to get to my office.  However, it is not impractical to park in the lowest level of the parking garage (underground) and walk up four flights of stairs to the lobby.  Just so you know, I'll be doing the stairs from the parking garage to the lobby, not to my office.  It's my challenge, I get to make the rules.  Live with it.