Improving Your Metobolic Health Through Exercise Snacking
Interrupting sitting with even low-intensity movements can lead to massive improvements in your health. If sustained sitting is the new smoking, let’s not sustain sitting.
You’ve heard the now-cliché statement, sitting is the new smoking. This cliché has its roots in science. People sitting for 8 hours/day without physical activity had health outcomes similar to those caused by obesity or smoking.(1) Poor health outcomes include increased risk of high blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and fat around the waist. Taken together these conditions can lead to metabolic syndrome, a condition affecting up to 1/3 of American adults. Metabolic syndrome increases the risk of diseases like type II diabetes, heart or kidney disease, and certain types of cancer.
Fortunately, interrupting sitting with even low-intensity movements can lead to massive improvements in your health. If sustained sitting is the new smoking, let’s not sustain sitting.
The argument for snacking
Exercise snacks are a relatively easy-to-implement solution to the problem of sitting. These are quick (30 seconds to a maximum of 10 minutes) bouts of movement inserted into your day. Exercise snacks break up sitting time. You can gain benefits from exercise without going to the gym or carving out large swaths of time for long daily workouts. The American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine reports improvements in cardiovascular fitness, body composition and other measures of health following implementation of exercise snacks.(2) Further, these studies showed excellent adherence to this mode of exercise, meaning people enjoyed the exercises and/or their benefits enough to form lasting habits.
Working exercise snacks into your day
The Mayo clinic recommends interrupting sitting every 30 minutes. We recognize this may be might not be practical for all people. But any break from sitting or increases in exercise provide an excellent start to better health. So whether you wish to snack every 30 minutes, or every 2 hours, here are some ideas to sneak exercise into your work or everyday life. We hope you find at least a couple nuggets which fit your needs.
Set a timer. when doing deskwork or other sedentary activities. There are several apps that will do this for you. Further many watches have a feature to remind you that you have been sitting too long. A gentle vibration on your wrist may be all you need to create a habit of healthy movement. Even 60 seconds of walking, jogging in place or 30 seconds of air squats will break up periods of sustained sitting.
Consider a desk allowing both sitting, standing or movement. Desks integrated with walking treadmills or stationary bicycles s are becoming increasingly popular. After-market treadmills designed to fit a standing desk are made with work in mind: they are quiet, simple to use and allow walking rather than running.
Walk and talk. If you are able, schedule some work meetings or phone calls to be conducted while walking. If you cannot get buy-in from your work team to take the meeting on a walk, marching in place while on phone or online meetings, is a great alternative. The exercise will stir creativity and productivity. Exercise has been shown countless times to improve one’s ability to think clearly, feel more energetic, and feel improvements in mood.
Park far from the work entrance or simply choose a bathroom a few floors up from your workstation add up to increased steps each day.
While at home, consider placing short period of exercise into activities which ordinarily do not take physical effort: mat exercises while watching TV or do a standing march while cooking, for example.
Exercises that make good snacks:
Walking, butt-kicking, or marching in place.
Air squats (assuming they do not bother your knees when not warmed-up), calf raises, standing straight leg raises, wall sits, standing planks (against a counter or wall), lunges.
Planks, pushups, sit-ups, straight leg raises while laying on your side
Arm lifts: raising or swinging arms in a jumping jack type motion; biceps curls or deltoid lifts with small weights, soup cans or rocks.
Shadow boxing.
Yoga poses (ones that do not force you to stretch, as you are not yet warmed up): tree pose for balance is a good example.
Step ups or any dance move you can conceive.
Brisk walking, stair repeats, use of aerobic exercise equipment, if available, for a few minutes.
References:
Chau JY, Grunseit AC, Chey T, Stamatakis E, Brown WJ, Matthews CE, Bauman AE, van der Ploeg HP. Daily sitting time and all-cause mortality: a meta-analysis. PLoS One. 2013 Nov 13;8(11):e80000. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080000. PMID: 24236168; PMCID: PMC3827429.
Brown NI, Henderson J, Stern M, Carson TL. Health-Related Benefits and Adherence for Multiple Short Bouts of Aerobic Physical Activity Among Adults. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2024 May 11:15598276241253160. doi: 10.1177/15598276241253160. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 39554919; PMCID: PMC11562445.