Shop yourself fit

Wouldn’t it be great if the very act of doing something you love could make you fit, and so you could achieve two separate things in one go? That’s something I’m always trying to achieve, and when it comes to getting fit and healthy, I consider it the holy grail.

Well, talking to my wife yesterday, we started to wonder why shopping isn’t something that we consider healthy in itself. It must sound funny to mention this, but as a woman, my wife was telling me that if she wore a step counter and went shopping, she’d find it really easy to notch up, say, 4,000 or 5,000 steps, maybe even more, without even thinking about it. If she shopped more regularly, she’d probably hit 10,000 easily.

Ok, I’m not saying that everyone should now shop 3 times a week for one hour and swap this for the gym. Especially since most couldn’t afford to go shopping so often. All I’m saying is that it is normally very difficult to encourage people to be active and burn calories. Most people find it very difficult to fit a decent amount of activity into their lives because these days, there are so many other distractions and so little need to actually be active. Especially with the advent of the internet, shopping doesn’t require you to leave the house.

Therefore, rethinking shopping in this way as something that has good health aspects to it ,gets you out of the house, can be done with your friends and allows you to try all sorts of things out. I think this seems like saying to people, “I need you to eat more chocolate for the sake of your health. Do you think you can do that?”.