If clunking weights, whizzing treadmill belts and groans of physical effort aren’t music to your ears, the gym may not be a habitat in which you are comfortable. While hitting the gym is the go-to method of calorie burning for many, it is far from the only way you can shed those unwanted pounds.
If you’d rather get fit without the cost, hassle and overwhelming smell of sweat associated with your local gym, try one of these gym-free methods of calorie burning.
1. Choose The Stairs
The allure of the elevator is intense indeed; however, if you can resist its siren’s call, you can make a dent in your calorie burning. Taking the stairs – especially when faced with only a single flight – isn’t too terribly daunting.
While you won’t get skinny quick with this lifestyle change alone, stair climbing does burn approximately 10 calories a minute, so making this a long-term effort can leave you several pounds lighter at year’s end with relatively little effort.
2. Get Fidgety
If you’re prone to playing with your pencil during business meetings or incessantly tapping your foot, you’re already burning more calories than you likely expect. The Mayo Clinic reports that, in the course of a day, a chronic fidgeter will burn 350 more calories than their calmer peers.
Instead of fighting your fidgety ways, give in and, in the course of the day, you’ll burn through your 300-calorie Egg McMuffin breakfast with calories to spare.
3. Play With Your Kids
Reduce your waistline and build your relationship with your child simultaneously. Instead of sending your little one outside to play solo, join him or her. Play Avengers with them or let them beat you – sometimes – in a soccer game. By engaging in these physical activities you’ll burn calories and improve your overall wellness and agility.
4. Get Up Often
Particularly if you’re chained to your desk during the work day, you probably spend the bulk of your time sitting. Break this cycle if you want to get fit. If you can do some of your work standing up, you’ll burn twice as many calories as you would have sitting down.
If you can manage to do it while working, you’ll burn three to five times the calories you would have slumped over in your chair. If you can’t help but sit at your office job, make it a point to get up and walk around, even if you’re just walking around your cubicle or office, at least once every hour.
5. Tend Your Garden
Make your landscaping the envy of the neighborhood without spending a dime – and burn calories in the process. You engage in lots of calorie-burning moves when you garden.
From bending to squatting, you really work those leg and core muscles and in a much more natural way than you would have at the gym. In an hour of gardening, you’ll burn about 136 calories, making your time tending to your lush greenery extra worth it.
6. Add Energy To Chore Completion
You always burn calories when you do chores around the house. You can burn extra calories, however, if you try to amp up your energy. Instead of dragging your feet, and making your chores take twice as long, add some pep to your step.
Try playing some upbeat music while you’re folding your laundry or cleaning your bathroom. Dance around. Have fun. Any extra energy you can manage to expend will pay off in the form of extra calories burned, giving you something to be peppy about.
7. Use Commercial Time
Do you really want to sit through another commercial with that annoying Afleck duck? Why not use that time to get fit. Particularly if you’re a die-hard TV fan, getting up and active during 
commercials can be an easy and effective way to ensure your evening TV viewing marathon doesn’t derail your day.
Pick some exercises that don’t require a bunch of space, like jumping jacks, sit-ups and push-ups. Each time a commercial comes on, start doing one of these equipment-free fitness moves.
Make yourself continue until your show is back on. Not only does this sneak exercise into your day without interrupting the routine you enjoy, but it also allows you to reap the benefits of circuit-style exercising, as you burn more calories by raising, then lowering, then raising again, your heartbeat.
