'I worked out in my living room for a month—Here's what happened'

November 2, 2017 9:04 PM

"Since I started working full-time, I’ve gotten lazy with my workouts."

When I learned that

I’ve always been semi-active, but since I started working full-time, I’ve gotten lazy with my workouts. I have a treadmill, and my go-to workout before or after a long day at work is, sadly, to jog slowly on my treadmill while catching up on my fave TV shows. Don’t get me wrong, this isn't my ideal workout. But, I also realize that it’s better than being sedentary, so I keep doing it. Plus, I like my shows.

When it comes to strength-training workouts, I always considered them out of my range because I thought I needed a gym with lots of fancy equipment to do them. And, if I'm being honest, convenience is the number one most important thing to me in fitness. (And you won't find me in a gym any time soon.) So when I snagged a copy of No Gym Required, I thought maybe this would be the ticket to finally making strength training part of my routine, and to take my workouts from lukewarm to smoking hot.

“Your body is a machine, and you have to learn how to use that machine correctly to get the best results,” says Irene McCormack, an exercise physiologist and fitness educator featured in the first chapter. “Bodyweight workouts will help you do that because you don’t have any buffer like free weights, to work with—so you learn exactly how your body works,” she says.

Okay, cool! Now I can feel proud that I'm too cheap to buy equipment and have very little familiarity with gym weight machines!

After diving in to the workouts in this book, I was hooked and ready to challenge myself to a full month of at home workouts. Here's what I learned during my 30-days of No Gym Required:

But to be honest, the best thing I learned after trying this book, was that the routines actually work. After only one month of substituting workouts from this book in place of my normal pre- or post-work treadmill jog-slog ritual, I was down seven pounds, and my core felt noticeably stronger and firmer.

The second best thing about it: I could do it in my living room, so I could still watch my shows! All I took out of my usual no cost, no transit, no hassle workout routine was the boredom.

Even though my month-long experiment is up, I’m definitely going to keep working out in my living room and using No Gym Required and other Women's Health bodyweight workout routines. There are so many different types, and I haven’t even tried them all yet.

One thing is for sure: I'm looking forward to a tighter bod and more weight loss going into the holidays. And I didn’t even have to spend any money or give up chilling out in my living room at the end of a long day.