When you have a busy schedule or a family to care for, gathering the willpower to do cardio can be a challenge. But what if you could make it so easy that you don’t even have to think about it? That’s the goal of this post: to show you how to integrate cardio into your daily routine without it feeling like a chore.

What I Tried First

Baseline Steps

Some mornings I barely have time to brush my teeth and you’re telling me I should schedule a run too? When I created this routine, I wanted to make it as simple as possible while helping me reach my fat-loss goal. Increasing my steps (NEAT) was the first step (pun intended).

Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) is the energy expended for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating, or sports-like exercise. This includes walking, cleaning, and even fidgeting. By increasing our NEAT, we can burn more calories without dedicating extra time to structured cardio.

I used my moving-average body weight as the feedback loop.

If my weight was… Then I would…
Going down at the correct rate Keep my steps the same
Going down too fast Reduce my steps by 500
Going down too slow (or gaining weight) Increase my steps by 500

Adding LISS

Once I hit 8,000 steps a day, I realized any more steps was not sustainable. It took me ~1 minute for 100 steps, so 8,000 steps took nearly 1.5 hours (sprinkled throughout the day). But the benefit-to-effort ratio of NEAT was diminishing. This is why I added LISS to my routine.

Low-Intensity Steady State (LISS) cardio is like the opposite of HIIT (high-intensity interval training). Exactly as it sounds—cardio at an easy pace for an extended period. LISS is effective for fat loss because it allows you to burn calories without the joint stress that comes with high-intensity workouts.

And I don’t know about you, but I usually get really hungry after a long run or HIIT session. LISS doesn’t do that to me.

Unlike NEAT, I treated LISS as a separate activity. It was more efficient for calorie burn, but it requires additional overhead time: changing into gym clothes, possibly driving to the gym, and showering afterward.

Why This Failed

For most of my fat-loss phase, I kept needing to increase steps and add more LISS. It got to the point where I simply skipped LISS because the time commitment became too high. And adding more steps was also hard to squeeze in.

Takeaway — Incremental Cardio Wins

Even though my adherence was falling, layering on more steps slowly actually stuck (for much longer than I thought it would). Before starting this routine, I was averaging 4,000 steps or less a day. By the end, I was averaging 8,000 steps a day. This was a huge win for me.

An Engineer’s Framework for Adding Cardio

Establishing the Baseline

Here’s what I recommend now that I’ve gone through this process and learned from my mistakes:

  1. Establish a baseline of 4,000 steps per day. If that’s still too high, just find where you are currently and start there.
  2. Increase your step count by 500 steps every 3 days until you hit 8,000 steps per day. Walking the extra steps for 3 days helps let the routine settle in. Keep pushing forward—realizing I sometimes needed an extra 1,000 or 2,000 steps made me appreciate that +500 isn’t so bad.

Even if you’re not trying to lose weight, this is a solid baseline for cardio. It will help you stay mobile and keep your joints healthy.

Congrats. You’ve established your baseline NEAT. Now you experiment.

Experimenting with Extra Cardio Layers

Since I determined NEAT wasn’t enough, the final step is finding the extra cardio that works. This really depends on your preferences and what you can stick with.

Here are the options I’m experimenting with. As I try them, I’ll post updates on how they worked for me, how to get started quickly, and how to adapt them into your routine.

Cardio Type Why?
Incline Walk All you need is a treadmill. I’m already getting my steps in—why not literally ramp up the intensity?
Ruck Easy upgrade to daily steps: throw on a weighted backpack.
Kettlebell Swings Minimal equipment; also improves posture and strength.
Rowing Erg Cardio that involves the upper body, helping build a balanced physique.
Stationary Bike I biked a lot for commuting; it still feels easier than running.

Next Reads

This post is Part 3 of a five-part series that will finish as a single “living” guide to hybrid fitness. If you haven’t read the previous parts, start here:

Or read other related posts: