Stealth Health: Chapter 7 - The No Workout Approach
You don't need a gym to get fit - daily activities like playing with your kids and doing chores can burn more calories than traditional workouts.
In Chapter 6, you learned about the Colour Code System. Now let's explore the first pillar of Stealth Health - Movement - and discover how to get results without ever setting foot in a gym.
Most people think they need to go to the gym to lose weight - but fat loss isn't in the gym, fat loss is in the kitchen.
This is the key distinction that changes everything: to look good naked, you focus on nutrition.
To improve performance and increase the size of your stress cup, you focus on movement - and you keep them separate. You don't want to mix the two.
Yes, extra movement allows you to eat more food (more on this in a minute), but you still have to focus on nutrition to be in a deficit.
If you were bed-bound, you could still lose weight if you focused on the Fuelling for Fat Loss protocols.
The No Workout Approach isn't about replacing nutrition for fat loss - it's about giving you more opportunities to collect wins while building a bigger stress cup.
If you have the mindset that training equals fat loss, you're setting yourself up for failure.
For most parents, they don't have the time for perfect programs or spending hours in the gym. The best part is you don't even need to.
I'll share a story soon on how I helped a train driver lose 80kg with just walking.
So how does this actually work? Let me break down the science.
More Opportunities to Collect Wins
The No Workout Approach allows you to eat more food while still losing weight, and it's the easiest one to implement.
It's all daily activity - yard work, housework, playing with your kids, walking the dog, things you can do quickly and easily throughout your day.
Traditional workouts account for maybe 10-20% extra calorie burn per day.
If you burn 2000 calories a day, that's only an extra 200–400 calories.
But daily activity accounts for 20-50% more calorie burn. It has the biggest effect on your total daily energy expenditure.
So that same 2000 calories quickly become 400-1000 extra calories. That is a full extra meal a day.
When I see people push back against calorie tracking and say diets are broken, I get it.
We have been told it's all about our workouts for years.
We've been told fat loss is a movement problem.
The real problem is that you haven't learned how to match nutrition to your movement yet.
So no matter if you move a lot or very little, you can still get lean.
You can get lean and stay lean without the stress of having to find 'more time.'
Then you can use the No Workout Approach without having to F.O.R.C.E yourself to do it.
Here's how I organise all these activities.
I have a Daily Activity Stamp Sheet that breaks movement into three categories.
It uses the traffic lights but in reverse order.
Green means go, do them daily. Yellow and red means caution, do them but don't try and F.O.R.C.E. them into your life.
Green activities (you can do every day): shopping, flying a kite, swimming, yoga, dance, playing catch, yard work, hide and seek, walking, kids play, lawn games, household chores, fetch with the dog, mucking around, shooting hoops.
Yellow activities (2-4 times per week): strength training, sport training, high-intensity play, hiking hills, spin class, boxing, mountain biking, interval training.
Red activities (1-2 times per week): playing actual sports, CrossFit competitions, intense group classes, mountain hiking, hills and stair sprints, playing tag.
The green activities are where the magic happens - they're things you're probably already doing or could easily add to family time.
They have a much bigger effect on your ability to eat more food while still staying lean. That is the reason I make it the number 1 movement priority.
It's your safety net for movement. If you can not train, no drama, do a No Workout Activity and win the day.
And the best thing is you probably are doing it already.
Let me show you how simple this can be with a real example.
The Simple Tracking System
I use a baseline of 7,000 steps - if you get more than that, you're generally fine with activity.
That's your Red Light minimum. But sometimes that's hard for people, so I look at their average step count over the last month and set a goal to increase it by 2,000 steps.
For some people who don't move much, like my wife who averages about 3000-5000 on days she doesn't run, just increasing by 2,000 is a worthy goal - that's only a 5-10 minute walk per day.
I also like to include 10–30 minutes of walking daily, not just for the steps but for mental health - it's a chance to clear your head and decompress.
So if you have the ability, try to sneak in a 10-min brisk walk whenever you get the chance.
Beyond that, it's simple: pick one to three activities from the stamp sheet for the week and test them out.
Let me tell you about Stu, a train driver I worked with.
When we started working together, he was adamant that he wasn't going to join a gym or do any training.
So all Stu did was walk to work while carrying a weighted backpack.
He did a few push-ups and step-ups when he passed a bench.
Then he matched his food to his movement with our Fuelling For Fat Loss System (which you will learn soon).
That was it - we didn't do anything else for his movement.
The guy didn't eat particularly well, but he went from 180 kilograms down to 100 kilograms just using that approach.
That's the power of the No Workout Approach - simple, sustainable, and incredibly effective.
But here's where this approach gets really powerful for ND families.
Building Kids Into Your System
The biggest mindset shift is from “I need to find time to exercise” to “I can get movement from what I'm already doing.”
A lot of times I ask parents: “What are you going to be doing with your kids, or what are the kids asking you to do with them?”
Build that into your Stealth Health system.
You're not getting FOMO about working on your health because you're building the kids in with it.
When they want to play tag, that's your high-intensity interval training.
When they want to go to the park, that's your walk.
When they want to play catch, that's your hand-eye coordination work.
This approach works really well because you're serving multiple priorities at once - your health and your family time.
Now, I know what you're thinking - this sounds too good to be true.
There's always massive resistance to this approach because people have been told they need to go to the gym.
When I coach other coaches, I hear the resistance in their voices.
They believe that training in the gym is the only way for it to work.
They think the No Workout Approach isn't “real exercise” or won't be effective enough.
But remember: movement isn't primarily for fat loss - it's for building a bigger stress cup, improving performance, and giving you more energy.
The fat loss happens in the kitchen through nutrition.
When you separate these goals, everything becomes clearer and more sustainable.
You can build incredible fitness through daily activities, and you can lose weight through matching your nutrition to your movement.
The No Workout Approach isn't about doing less - it's about doing what works for your real life.
Here's how to make this approach practically invisible.
Making movement invisible and automatic is the secret to long-term success.
Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
Park further away from the store.
Play more actively with your kids instead of just watching them play.
Do household chores with more energy and movement.
Walk while taking phone calls.
These aren't huge changes, but they add up to significant increases in daily activity.
The best part is they don't feel like exercise - they just feel like living your life more actively.
And that's exactly what the No Workout Approach is about - making movement a natural part of your day instead of something you have to schedule around everything else.
This is Stealth Health in action.
Remember, this is Stealth Health - it sits under the radar while dramatically improving your capacity to show up in your ND spicy life.
Your family doesn't see you “working out” - they see you playing with them, doing chores, walking places, living an active life.
But behind the scenes, you're building a bigger stress cup, burning more calories, and creating more opportunities to say “yes” when your kids want to be active.
It's health that serves your life instead of competing with it.
And that's why the No Workout Approach is often the most sustainable piece of the entire Stealth Health system.
Now that you understand how to move without working out, let's explore how to build serious strength in just 5–20 minutes a day.
