No Gym!?! Four Fun Activities to do for Exercise.

I am on vacation and am still trying to lose weight. This is hard because you want to go out with family and friends and eat wonderful yummy things. I want to win my biggest loser competition so I can't be horribly bad. So I have been making it a point to exercise most every day. I normally exercise at the gym in our apartment complex but my sister's complex doesn't have one. While I have been on vacation I have compiled a list of four activities that are good for exercise and will get your heart rate up and burn calories. I just got a heart rate monitor and have been tracking my burned calories that way.

I have also made a YouTube channel and I have started Vlogging. I made a video about this if you want to check it out.

The first activity I enjoyed on this trip was going to the park. I have a hard time running because it hurts my hip just under my butt cheek so I just slitely jog. The problem with this is that is my heart rate wasn't getting up high enough to burn sufficient calories. So while I was out I kept an eye out for stairs or steps. Anytime I saw some I would run up and down them over and over to get my heart rate up. When I started to think I was tired of doing that then I would make myself go up five more times. This was a really good way to get my heart rate up. Just walking my heart rate is too low to burn as many calories as I want. This way I can get it up for a little while till I come across another set of steps.

It was a nice walk. There was a pond with ducks. I guess it's spring because there was a flock of baby ducks. So cute! This park has a Frisbee golf course and it was nice to walk around there in the trees. There was also a bunch of little streams surrounded by berry bushes. It is a shame they aren't ripe yet. I would be having free snacks of blackberries everyday! I also enjoyed listening to nature as I was out. I heard birds and bugs in the trees making their sounds and the water running in the brook. It was a really nice time. I enjoyed this time way more than I enjoyed my time on the elliptical. Even though I can watch TV and the shows I want to watch at the gym I think it was a nicer time being out in nature. Also, it was nice to get some of the rays of the sun on my skin. This is something that you can do with friends as well. I went to the park with a couple friends and their babies and we pushed their strollers around the park. The last time I did this I was pushing the stroller for an hour and eleven minute and burned 563 calories.

The second activity is jumping rope. I really like this because it gets my heart rate up faster than anything. Except maybe running up the steps. I have done this a few times as well for an hour. Granted the view is nice but its not as fun as being at the park. I do burn more calories doing this. I started off setting the timer for a minute and jumping till it went off then doing the same for a break. Then I started to make my breaks shorter. 30 seconds then down to 15 seconds. Then I upped my jumping period to 3 minutes with a 15 second to 1 minute break. I liked this. It made the time go faster it seemed. One thing that can get a little frustrating is when you step on the rope and the jumping stops. Sometimes it just keeps on happening over and over. I just keep on trying till the 3 minutes are up. Most of the time I can jump non stop for 45 seconds or more.

In addition to exercising at the park or jumping rope the third activity you can do is go to the roller skating rink. The rink closest to my sisters was in the surrounding area and they had a deal for $2 Tuesday. You pay $2 to skate and $2 for the skate rental. I already had skates so it was only $2 for me! This is a good exercise if you ask me. We were there for two hours and if you keep up a good pace then you can burn a good amount of calories. In those two hours I burnt 700 calories. I guess its not as much for an hour but it was good fun for two hours and I burnt 700 calories. So that is more than I would have gotten just running for an hour at the park or even jumping rope. This as well can be a group activity.

The fourth exercise you don't need a gym for is swimming. My mom swims at least an hour everyday. She swims laps in her pool. I used to swim laps when I lived in HI at the rec park and they had a full sized pool. My mom's is way smaller but it still does the trick. I think that I would burn more calories in a bigger pool because I think you have to work harder for longer distances. Where in the smaller pool you get to kick off more often thus you don't work so hard. Yesterday I swam with my mom. She burned more calories than me because she was going faster than I was but in an hour I burned 424 calories. Which isn't so bad. Today her complex pool was closed so we went to her gym. This is the pool they have there and this length was way better for me. As was the black lines. I was able to swim the crawl without stressing that I was going to crash into the side walls from drifting. Also the black lines end before the wall so you know when to stop. Today I burned 406 calories swimming for 54 minutes. If I had gone as long as I had in the past the calorie count would have been bigger.

I hope these are an encouragement to you on your weight loss journey or even if you are just trying to be healthy, exercise is very important. Times are tough so sometimes we can't afford the gym membership but this is all to say we don't need it. We can do fun things and get our heart rate up and burn calories and lose weight without the gym. Good luck everybody. If you have other ways of exercising without a gym then leave a comment below and let me know. I like to do different things and your ideas would be fun to try out!