How To Stay Fit Without A Gym? — Is It Possible?

My definition of staying fit is staying healthy and agile enough to enjoy life. But thinking it takes a gym or running a marathon to stay fit is a common error and causes people to give up on pursuing good health.

If you’re not sure how to stay fit without a gym, this post is for you. Even if you opt for a gym membership, exercise is only part of the fitness equation.

It starts with a mental intention to do what it takes to stay healthy. First you make the best health possible a life’s priority, then you learn what’s involved. Read on for why staying fit doesn’t require a gym.

The Basics of Staying Fit

● Diet

Not dieting, but diet! Staying fit and healthy has to start with what and how you eat. If you’re not fit now, there’s a good chance that your eating habits are common, and good health is uncommon.

The common way to eat these days is to do most of your eating in fast-food places or restaurants. Dinning at home is at least as unhealthy; made up of processed foods and pastries.

Fit people seldom need to lose weight because their diet and food choices are healthy. When you eat healthy most of the time, it’s difficult to be overweight.

But what is eating healthy?

It begins with limiting processed foods of any kind from anywhere. Processed foods comes in cans and packages (with the exception being dried beans and lintels). Cutting back on processed foods means replacing them with fresh and frozen vegetables and fruits.

Fresh vegetables, dried beans, whole grains, fruits, nuts, fish, fowl, and meat is what we’re meant to eat, digest, and burn for energy. Shoot for at least 80% of your diet based on healthy foods and forget dieting.

Breaking the addiction to sugar and eating whole and fresh foods makes you feel good, have much more energy, reduces your risk of heart disease, most cancer, and common illnesses.

● Regular Physical Activity

Sitting is the nations new health epidemic, and it can only get worse. We have turned into a nation of office workers coming home to watch TV or get online.

Our children go to school, sit at a desk for hours, rush home and get online or play video games until bedtime. Instead of getting exercise involved in lawn work, we hire someone to mow, shovel the snow, rake the leaves, and clean the gutters.

Lack of Physical Activity Leads to Infirmity

With the lack of exercise comes the obesity crisis, and it’s taking a toll on body, mind, spirit, and joints. Staying fit means staying mobile, flexible, and in good spirit, all of which comes as a result of staying active. So, as it winds up, fitness is a by product of exercise.

But joining a gym won’t keep you healthy. There are plenty of ways to get your body moving without a gym membership. It starts with getting out of the chair and moving. Fact is, you can do that indoors or outdoors. It’s a mental makeover first, then a mindset, then a habit to stay active–at least after work on weekends.

● Drink Water

Human bodies are comprised of about 60% water. When the composition is less than that, it’s known as dehydration. Most of the population stays on the verge of dehydration for the lack of water. That’s interesting because there is not shortage of water in this country, just a shortage of people staying hydrated.

Studies have shown that as much as 75% of the American population is clinically and chronically dehydrated. That dehydration comes with a price. See if you can relate to any of the common symptoms of not staying hydrated: fatigue, poor memory, irritability, stress, lack of focus and more.

Drinking Enough Water Is Essential To Your Fitness Level

On the other hand, all of those symptoms improve quickly and naturally when you drink enough water, along with curbing your appetite. How much is enough? Health authorities still recommend following the 8×8 rule — eight 8oz glasses of water every day.

Don’t believe the old myth that coffee and tea aren’t part of the equation either. DO believe me when I tell you drinking soft drinks or any other drink with sugar IS defeating the purpose because they work against your fitness levels. Most of all, drink when you are thirsty. If you are exercising or sweating, drink more.

● Get A Hobby

Believe it or not, a hobby can help you live longer. It’s easy to think of hobbies as only an escape route from the daily grind and stress, but a hobby can actually improve your health. This time is a way to get into your personal happy place. And when you do that pretty regularly, you will see your mental, emotional, and physical health improve.

Hobbies are doing something you love doing that has no time restraints, and the quality of the results only matters to you. It’s when you get to focus on something relaxing (watching TV is definitely not a good hobby). Hobbies improve memory, relieve stress, depression, and often lead to social interaction, all of which is important to staying fit and healthy.

Helping Others Makes For a Fulfilled Life

If you don’t currently have a hobby, you will want to choose something that fits your present physical abilities. For the best results and most rewarding benefits pick something that benefits others. Doing things for people less fortunate than yourself is the greatest way to live and enjoy life.

Summary

There’s no doubt that going to the gym can be good for staying fit, trim, slim, building muscle, and making friendships. But the truth is you can do all of that and more without any equipment or membership fees at all.

The core of fitness is being responsible to your best health, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Whether you use a gym in the process is strictly up to you.

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