Exercise Snacks
The great Rhonda Patrick was the first person I heard coin the term “exercise snack”, and it’s stuck with me ever since.
Rhonda is a biochemist with a Ph.D. in biomedical science. Her work revolves around disease prevention, aging research, and the world of nutrition. I was listening to her podcast and she cited a research article detailing out the relationship between short, vigorous bouts of physical activity and mortality rate. The results were ASTOUNDING.
I’ll give you the abridged version. And I’ll try to make it fun, despite the fact that I’m rehashing old research.
The study followed 25,000 non-exercising adults over the course of 7 years. They examined the effect vigorous intermittent lifestyle activity (VILPA) or rather “exercise snacking” had on all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, and cancer mortality. Not shockingly, VILPA was inversely associated with all three of these outcomes in a near-linear fashion. Vigorous intensity activity goes up, chronic disease and death go down. Boom.
Compared to their nonactive colleagues, the study subjects who averaged 3 exercise snacks a day (1-2 minutes each) showed a 38%–40% reduction in all-cause and cancer mortality risk and a 48%–49% reduction in CVD mortality risk. We’re talking 6 minutes MAX of high intensity exercise dispersed throughout the day. That cut their chances of dying from cardiovascular disease almost in half. Those are insane numbers to me.
Why do I bother breaking this down at all? Because I think this article makes it blindingly obvious that it doesn’t take much. Gone are the days of excusing yourself from the gym, the pilates class, or your early morning run because you “ran out of time”. While those more organized forms of exercise can play a crucial role in our lives, so can SIX MINUTES of high intensity activity!
I’ll leave you with some examples of snacks for your choosing. And remember, these are just short bouts of activity to be performed throughout your day. Probably even more beneficial if done when highly stressed or irritated (at least for me).
Jump squat, burpee, jumping jack, air squat, push up between meetings
Take the stairs instead of the elevator, but run them
Walk your dog, but then run the last 200 meters
Vigorously fist pump to your favorite song on the way to work
That last one was a joke. Thanks for reading, happy snacking!
