How to Exercise for Less Than 30 Minutes a Day, Eat What You Want and Lose Weight!

Wednesdays are normally dedicated to health and fitness around the blog. Since I’m still out of town, I thought I’d bring on a guest blogger for this week’s health and fitness post! I’m still keeping up with my exercise goals even while I’m out of town – you can follow those at my all new fitness focused instagram account: absandanchors.

I hate the gym. I love food. And there lies the problem…

It might seem crazy to think that you can exercise, eat what you want and lose weight — particularly if you’re eating foods that are generally classed as not healthy AND you’re not going to an actual gym to exercise — but I’m here to call “boulderdash” on that!

As a full-time freelance writer and author, I’ve been working from home for over 4 years. And in that time, I’ve tried to stick with going to the gym and eating the right foods, but it never lasts more than 3 months at most, until something inevitably happens that draws me back to easier ways of living… ie, eating what I want and not exercising at all.

After 18 months of this type of yo-yoing, I’d had enough. I wanted to feel good, but I didn’t want to have to go to a gym to achieve it. I didn’t want to be judged on what I wore to workout, nor did I want to receive weird looks because of how red my face gets when I exercise… 

So while I was willing to exercise and review my eating habits, I wasn’t prepared to hit the gym again, and if you read everything online and in health magazines, they always try to steer you towards joining a gym, something that just doesn’t sit right with me. 

How about you?

Yes, you can buy weights and exercise equipment to workout at home, but what about if you don’t have the funds to do that, or what if you’re travelling more than you’re home? And what if you just don’t want to do weights at all? What are your options?

This is what I was dealing with when I was trying to figure out what to do.

Enter No Gym Needed and No More Dieting!

In July 2014, it became very clear to me that the answer to what I’d been searching for wasn’t as readily available as I’d like. 

It was difficult to find exercise routines that didn’t involve some sort of weight and it was hard to find routines that were less than 30 minutes—something that was important to me because my schedule was tight and if I’m being honest, I don’t really enjoy exercising, so 30 minutes max is about all I’m prepared to put in.

You too? Thank goodness, I thought it was just me who didn’t enjoy exercising…

So, what’s a gal to do?

Create her own at-home exercises instead!

I became so frustrated, that I wrote a book called No Gym Needed: Quick & Simple Workouts for Gals on the Go instead. 

I’d love to share with you some of the routines from the book, so that you can kick off your own at-home exercise routine (without needing weights!) and have a resource to refer back to that you can build on and follow for yourself.

You’ll find that all the workouts below will take you less than 30 minutes to complete, and because of this, they are pretty high impact, so you get your blood pumping and lungs filled with air as quickly as possible which leads to faster weight loss.

I know that high impact isn’t for everyone, so you’ll see some low impact options as well. 

Ready to get started? Read on…


High Intensity Impact Workout Circuit (HIIT) #1

Complete each exercise below with no rest in between for 5 rounds. Take a 30 second rest between each round and then repeat.

If you alternate between these 4 routines for the next 30 days, you’ll start to see some small changes within your weight loss. 

You need to identify what your ideal calorie intake should be. If you’re looking to lose weight, 1700 – 2000 calories is about right. This will largely depend on how active you are each day. This awesome website provides you with everything you need to figure out what your ideal calorie intake should be: http://flexible-diet.co.uk/#how-section

Once you know what your calorie count is, it’s time to figure out the macro portion. The general breakdown for macros that our bodies need is 33% Protein, 38% Fat and 29% Carbs. That is then converted into grams, based on the amount of calories you’re meant to be consuming. If you use the calculator in the link above, this will breakdown your macros for you and show how many grams you should be consuming for each macro.

Once you understand your macro breakdown, you simply start counting them. This means looking at the package your foods come in and looking at the serving sizes. Then you can look at the protein, fat and carb breakdowns from there. I use a simple spreadsheet calculator that keeps track of my macros based on my calories and macro breakdown (see screenshot below).