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This opened the door to questions like what length of time qualifies as physical activity and how frequent or intense those intervals must be to benefit heart health, blood sugar levels and other key health measures.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Researchers are still trying to figure out some of those answers, but the consensus so far is that exercise snacks have clear benefits.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe used to think you have to (exercise) at least 10 minutes at a time for it to matter,\u201d said Marily Oppezzo, an instructor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center who studies exercise snacks. But \u201cyour body doesn\u2019t care if you do it all in one place at a time for it to count. That belief is an artifact.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Exercise snacks can break up long stretches of sitting, which harms your health starting at as little as two consecutive hours by negatively affecting insulin resistance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEven 30 seconds of walking can reverse some of the effects of prolonged sitting,\u201d Oppezzo said. \u201cOr do some body-weight squats. Just use your large limbs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Snacks can also make exercise feel more accessible to the many people who struggle to meet that 150-minute-a-week goal. And they\u2019re a chance to get in activities you might not normally do in your regular workout, even if you\u2019re already a consistent gym-goer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how experts say you can get the most out of your exercise snacks:\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Aim for moderate to high intensity<\/p>\n
While simply walking is beneficial because it interrupts sedentary time, upping the intensity offers more benefits, experts said. In most studies on exercise snacks, people are moving \u201cpretty vigorously,\u201d Nied said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not, \u2018I get up and walk to the fridge and back,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s, \u2018I\u2019ve got to get my heart rate up.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Nied recommends shooting for a 5 out of 10 on a scale of perceived exertion, or a pace of walking that would take about 20 minutes to cover a mile\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 the equivalent of 3 mph.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should be out of breath enough that you can\u2019t sing an aria but you could still carry on a conversation,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s your target zone for how hard you\u2019re doing these snacks.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Office workers can achieve this, for instance, by parking farther from the office and walking a longer distance in, or by doing short spurts of bodyweight exercises during the day, like squats or burpees, he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Getting your heart rate up frequently is important because \u201cit gives your heart and body a chance to go, \u2018Oh, I have to work. Then I have to calm down. And this is OK,\u2019\u201d Oppezzo said. \u201cIf you only do that once a month, your body thinks that was a fluke and we don\u2019t have to do it again. But if you\u2019re doing this a couple times a day, your body thinks, \u2018Oh, we better make this easier,\u2019 and it adapts. This is what conditioning is.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Experts say short bursts of movement \u2014 including exercises like squats \u2014 can improve health and make it easier to fit physical activity into a busy day.<\/p>\n
Oleksandra Troian\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Strength training may have more benefits\u00a0<\/p>\n
In one study Oppezzo is working on, participants did either walking snacks or strength snacks (bodyweight exercises like wall sits and single-leg sit-to-stand exercises) for a couple of minutes at a time, a few times a day, for several weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Both groups got stronger, but the strength group got a lot stronger, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Snacks benefit even those who work out regularly<\/p>\n
Everyone can benefit from exercise snacks, but how much you benefit probably depends on your baseline activity level.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a principle in exercise research known as Paffenbarger\u2019s rule, which says that the greatest benefit will be for those who start out sedentary and then do a little activity. Those who are already active and add to that will still benefit, but less dramatically than those who start at zero.<\/p>\n
\u201cA little goes a long way initially,\u201d Nied said.<\/p>\n
But those who already work out consistently can still benefit from snacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe on days you aren\u2019t going to the gym, you\u2019re doing these little things,\u201d Nied said. \u201cOr you spend less time at the gym because you\u2019re doing these little things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oppezzo recommends doing something you wouldn\u2019t normally do during your regular workouts, like meditation while walking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Planning ahead may help motivate you<\/p>\n
Oppezzo\u2019s research suggests that people are more likely to do exercise snacks if they\u2019ve decided what they\u2019re going to do beforehand\u00a0\u2014 say, strength on Monday, stretch on Tuesday, high-intensity on Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDo whatever you\u2019re going to do, but it helps to decide ahead of time,\u201d she said. \u201cOtherwise you might get to your time and waffle about what to do, which makes you less likely to do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anecdotally, she\u2019s observed in her research that people are more likely to have snacks later in the day if they have one in the morning. This is because some people fall into an all-or-nothing way of thinking.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they don\u2019t have one done by lunch, they\u2019re like, \u2018Ugh, this whole day is a fail. I\u2019ll start tomorrow,\u2019\u201d she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Dose\u2019 may not matter that much<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get too hung up on how many minutes or how often you should snack, experts said. The most important thing is to do something, and try to make it something that\u2019s sustainable.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not as concerned about what\u2019s the right dose,\u201d Oppezzo said. \u201cI care about what people will do and for the long-term. It can be 30 seconds, that\u2019s it. Maybe it\u2019s 30 seconds of a wall sit. And get back to work. And give yourself the win.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a snack. Don\u2019t overthink it. Just do a thing,\u201d Oppezzo said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brief bursts of activity throughout the day, often called \u201cexercise snacks,\u201d can improve health and help break up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[64,63,538,137],"class_list":["post-766084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fitness","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}