Some of the most powerful health habits don't happen in the gym. They happen while carrying groceries, climbing stairs, walking the dog, folding laundry, standing up from your desk, or simply taking the long way around.

In this episode of 1,000 Waking Minutes, Dr. Wendy Bazilian explores the surprising science behind NEAT, or Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, the everyday movement that occurs outside of structured exercise. While many people focus on workouts, research suggests that the cumulative effect of daily movement may play an important role in energy expenditure, metabolic health, cognitive performance, mood, sleep, and even longevity.

Wendy shares the fascinating story of a client who transformed her relationship with movement by learning to recognize and value the activity already built into her day. She also unpacks one of the most memorable studies in health psychology, where hotel housekeepers experienced measurable improvements in health simply by understanding that their physically demanding work counted as exercise.

Along the way, you'll learn why fidgeting may be more meaningful than you think, how short movement breaks can support mental sharpness and mood, and why sitting for long periods may undermine health even when regular workouts are part of the routine.

This episode also includes a guided Mindful Minute and practical strategies to help you increase movement naturally throughout the day without adding another item to your to-do list.

The takeaway? Movement is not something reserved for a scheduled workout. It's something we live. And every step, stretch, carry, climb, and pause is an opportunity to invest in your health throughout your 1,000 waking minutes.

CHAPTERS:

(00:00) A Quiet Rebellion Against Sitting

(4:03) What Is NEAT? Understanding Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis

(7:43) The Busy Mom Who Changed Her Mindset About Exercise

(12:39) The Hotel Housekeeper Study and the Power of Perception

(2139) Your Body Is Paying Attention All Day

(25:53) The Surprising Power of Fidgeting and Movement Breaks

(31:06) Mindful Minute

(34:54) Practical Ways to Move More Without Adding a Workout

(39:47) Movement Is a Life Skill

CONNECT WITH WENDY:

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Thank you for tuning in to 1,000 Waking Minutes and being part of this journey–together. A huge thank you to our amazing collaborators including our production and marketing teams and Gabriela Escalante in particular. To the ultra-talented Beza for my theme music, my lifelong friend and artist Pearl Preis Photography and Design, to Danielle Ballantyne, Jen Nguyen, Joanna Powell, and of course, my family and everyone working tirelessly behind the scenes.

HEALTH DISCLAIMER:

The information shared in this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered individual medical or health advice. Always consult with your trusted healthcare provider before making any changes to your diet, exercise, or medical treatment.

Have you ever noticed that some of the most meaningful things we can do for our

health are also some of the least glamorous? Today we're talking about the

power of ambulate, which is a perfectly useful word and also sounds a little

like it wandered out of a Victorian dictionary wearing sensible shoes.

We experience 1,000 waking minutes on average every day. How are you spending yours?

I'm Dr. Wendy Bazilian and you're listening to 1,000 Waking Minutes. I can't wait to connect

with you here with practical ways to eat well, move daily and be healthy, to optimize every

waking minute you live for a happier, healthier life. Thank you for sharing some of your waking

minutes with me today. Let's get started. I'm saying yes to better days. Yes. I'm on my way.

Yes. It's gonna be okay. Yeah. Hello and welcome to 1,000 Waking Minutes. I'm Dr. Wendy Bazilian,

and I'm really glad you're here today. I'm grateful we get to spend some of my and your

1,000 waking minutes together because that's where the real life of health happens. It's in the

hours, not just in the gym or in the active things that we're doing for our health. It's right here,

right now. And this has purpose because maybe this episode is really sort of a

quiet rebellion of sorts. And it's a new take on something you've probably taken for granted

and maybe not given its due. I'm not talking about anything dramatic, anything with, you know,

card carrying. I'm not going to do that or I'm going to do that forevermore. No parades and

speeches about how grand this health habit is. But it's something internal. It's something private,

sort of. It's where you stand up, where you take the stairs, where you pace while you walk. It's

when you carry your own bag or many bags. I've been known to call myself the bag lady because I can

tote many in balance at times. When you refill your water bottle or walk the dog a little further

and you realize that movement is not just something that you schedule. It's something that you live

all the time and it matters. It's part of living and we're going to talk about how important

those kinds of movements are today. That's where a rather clunky word, and I've thought a lot about

this word recently in preparing for this and over the years really, but it's an important word.

It's called ambulate or ambulation. And this is where ambulate enters the scene. It's sort of like

the sensible shoes that you have in your closet. It's the ones that you want to put on and you sort

of question. You're like, I want to put those on. They're comfortable. They're not the maybe the

most stylish or the ones, but they're the sensible shoes. And maybe that's exactly what it is. It

sounds also a little formal, a little buttoned up, the word ambulate. It's a little fussy maybe,

but underneath it's really beautifully unfussy. It's about moving more in your day. And I'm not

adding to your movement. I'm just making count the things that you're already doing. And you

might just do more because you realize how much they count. These are the things that you do on

purpose in ways that count. And that's really neat. And I say the word N.E.A.T. not to be sort of old

fashioned last century, but N.E.A.T. actually stands for something. And it stands for non-exercise

activity thermogenesis. NEAT... N-E-A-T. I didn't make it up. Promise. It's officially defined as

any unplanned or unstructured low-level physical activity. So it includes all the movement you do

that is not sleep, that is not eating, and it's not planned exercise. Now,

I have spent enough time around real people in real life to know that not everyone can always

get in the workout, but everyone is living inside a body that responds to motion. And that body

notices the difference between being parked all day on a seat and being gently, repeatedly

brought back to life in motion. So let's put this all in perspective and think about real life.

Your life. My life. You know the feeling that you get after a good day of yard work or gardening.

You might like it or you might do it because it's the season and you've got to do it. It's

your chores. But when you're done with that day, don't you sort of like bask in the sense

of accomplishment as you're, you know, showering off the sweat or the dirt between your fingernails?

You're suddenly aware of muscles you didn't know you had. I've had so many instances of this. Like,

wow, my raking muscles are out of shape. Or my goodness, I almost got a blister on my hand

from using the clippers. While you're out there beautifying your surroundings, you have also

gotten in a great workout. Those are the ones that you feel. But you didn't have to go, you know,

get on a spin bike or get on your treadmill or elliptical. You didn't need an instructor. You

didn't need a mirror to dance to. That kind of thing is N.E.A.T.. It's a little actually more active

than N.E.A.T., but it's the non-exercise activity thermogenesis. Thermogenesis is like metabolic

creation, energy creation. It's like heat being produced. It's metabolism. And it really is

a term that refers to those calories that we expend doing daily activities, as I mentioned,

other than sleeping, eating and the exercise that we do on purpose. Now, this is sort of like an

active version of it. But simple tasks, well, you can call them simple or not, but simpler tasks

like vacuuming or folding laundry or climbing the stairs, lifting babies, even fidgeting,

which I'm going to talk about a little bit. They're all considered N.E.A.T.. And science shows

that they work to boost calorie burn throughout your day. And you've probably heard the old tips

I'll give them today. I've given them before. You'll hear them again, like take the stairs instead

of the escalator or park in a distant further spot and walk the extra steps. This is about increasing

your N.E.A.T. and getting back to the basics of movement before our lives got so sedentary

by nature. So I wanted to just share, you know, a real life story. A few years ago, I worked with a

woman and I was thinking about it. I decided to call her Erica today. I have a lovely friend. This

is not you, Erica, if you're listening. Lovely friend named Erica. And I was thinking about her

recently. So I'm going to name this person I worked with, Erica. That's not her real name.

Well, she was a busy mom, like many moms, dads, people. But she was a busy mom in her mid 40s.

And she became increasingly, let's call it stress. That was her word about not being able to

exercise or exercise regularly. She had had a good routine. She had been active as a child playing

team sports. She had stayed very fit and committed in her 20s and 30s. But now the demands of her

career, her home life, running after her multiple kids, she felt she was lagging mentally and

physically because she couldn't find time to get to the gym. And her frustration is what was eating

her up her frustration at that. And in actuality, Erica was still in good shape. And her physical

activity was still impressive. You might be this person or know people like this. It just wasn't

something she could calculate anymore, log on her elliptical. And if you are or know someone who's

sports minded, sometimes that's enough. It's like part of the the game that someone who is is, you

know, a competitive athlete even plays. It's like sort of like the credit for hours or putting in

the time and it's quantifiable. Well, this is what was sort of making her nervous or stressed.

So we just sort of started talking and I sort of mentioned the concept of N.E.A.T. because we always

walk through the day together. And I encouraged her to think about the multitude of activities

that she did in the course of the day that actually do count as exercise. So I wasn't giving her

grandiose credit. I wasn't even printing out sheets, even though I've done this before

sheets of like, how many calories do you burn doing some average exercises or things that you

move through the house? It's kind of fun to to think about that at times, but we weren't doing

that. But we're just talking about the basics, the doing the laundry, the folding clothes,

the climbing the stairs, you know, the home chores, as well as bending and lifting kids and

playing outside with the kids, walking the family dog. And I asked her to make a list of all the

physical exertion she made in a day and then to importantly, give herself credit for the activity

which she was doing. Now, in our household right now, I have a daughter who's in elementary school,

as many of you know, who've listened before. And we give credit or points or things like that.

I didn't give her a specific number of points, but give yourself credit. Like, think of it like

exercise. Let's sort of quantify that, wow, you're spending minutes, your life's currency,

on living actively, even though it's not the way that you used to do it. And it may not be the way

that you intend to do it again. But as Erica started to appreciate the amount of her N.E.A.T.

non-exercise activity, thermogenesis, of that kind of movement or exercise she was getting,

she began to get easier in the mind. It started to alleviate some of her stress over what she was

supposed to do, you know, or what she was intending to do that played out in her mind,

what she wanted to do. She still wanted to do those things because someone who enjoys

her exercise or enjoys that time to be dedicated for something very for herself.

But she became more aware, and she turned up her N.E.A.T. activities within the day into even better

movement opportunities. And it was sort of like now a mental and physical game for her, a game

with real payoff, in fact, over time. So her energy and her strength increased as she did the same

things with more, you know, more, you know, a combination of more intention and more effort.

And the even better part was that she was giving herself the credit. It helped ease her anxiety

over this, and it vastly improved her quality of sleep because she was losing sleep over the,

you know, how much earlier can I get up in the morning to accomplish this, and I'm tired,

and I have kids, all the stuff, all the stuff of life. So her experience brings to mind a fascinating

study. In fact, I knew this study when I was working with her, and I sort of leaned into it.

But it was a study of hotel service people, housekeepers, conducted by Harvard psychologist

Ellen Langer, which produced some really stunning findings about N.E.A.T.. And we can all imagine

having stayed in hotels, I'm sure, before, that cleaning hotel rooms is pretty strenuous work.

There's a time constraint, there's changing sheets, there's lifting things, there's moving

things, there's the big carts, lifting the vacuums, the laundry, you know, it's a lot.

And it's like, it's work. Making beds, scrubbing showers, think about that. So needless to say,

in this study, the workers in the study did enough heavy lifting on the job to exceed the

Surgeon General's recommendation of daily exercise, which is, was at the time, and still is, 150

minutes of activity, moderate activity on a weekly basis. So about 30 minutes a day,

at least five days a week. So they were meeting and exceeding it by far. But despite this,

the housekeeper staff were, on average, overweight in this study, and their bodies failed to reflect

the workouts that they were getting, curiously. And we can attribute that to many things,

but that's not the point of the study, of some of the other factors that may play a role,

obviously nutrition and lifestyle and other pieces that may play a very bona fide role.

But in this study, the researchers divided the hotel room staff into two groups.

One group was educated about the benefits provided by their daily labor, the work they did,

that it counted as exercise, that they were really doing movement and purposeful exercise.

And the other group remained sort of in the dark about this. So they were randomized,

and then they were put in these two groups. One was educated that their work counted,

that their work was purposeful, that it counted those energy expending and metabolically burning,

and it counted as exercise. So you may predict what the results are, maybe not,

but are you ready for this? Remarkably, the informed group quickly showed weight loss

and physical improvements, including a drop in their blood pressure, the upper number,

systolic blood pressure. They experienced an improved waist to hip ratio. And overall,

their blood pressure drop was statistically significant and around 10% drop. The results

are a little challenging to explain. That's not a simple mechanistic study, but the study suggests

that when the hotel housekeepers experienced a change in mindset, their bodies followed suit.

Their N.E.A.T. activity began to affect their overall health. Did it maybe impact how much purpose and

energy they put into the work? Maybe. Did it impact the way that they chose their foods around their

healthier self and healthier mindset? Maybe. Did some of the stress chemicals shift a little bit

in favor of allowing an internal environment that helps with healthier weight and blood pressure?

Maybe. But the point is, they recognize that N.E.A.T. counted, and the results, I just think,

are so cool. So with these experiences in mind, sharing a little bit about my Erica today,

and working with countless people, and just reiterating how important our waking minutes

are and the choices we make as we're living toward a well-lived life today and forward,

I'd like us to focus today on all the movements you do each day and to celebrate them.

Chances are you are already doing a lot of N.E.A.T. exercise without realizing the impact it may have

on your caloric burn and your mindset, mental health as well. But once you become aware of it,

you'll likely increase your N.E.A.T. too. So instead of like, ugh, do I have to do the dishes now,

or when am I going to get to them? Maybe you'll do it with a little more vigor and maybe even a

little more of a smile. You'll make it count, in other words. Instead of having to vacuum

the spill that can happen in a household, add a few little cha-cha steps or practice a little bit

of your dance moves while you're doing it. And this is the best part. You can give yourself

credit for everything you did. And I'm a person who loves to, maybe I'll talk about this on

another episode sometime, there's a great book that I've always loved and I recommend it to

many people called The Art of Possibility by Benjamin and Rosalind Zander from maybe around

2000 it was written, but talking about giving yourself an A, you know, giving yourself credit.

I am all for that. I'm about positive love, positive credit, and you have nothing to lose

from starting out with giving yourself credit for what you do. Just look at all the exercise

that you can accomplish without hours on the treadmill, without the Zumba. I'm not saying

that those aren't important. I'm not saying that you should stop them or you should not

work toward including those in for your cardiovascular health and a lot of other reasons.

But when you track the value of all the things you do on a day-to-day basis, you'll see how they

really add up and use that as an inspiration to get a few extra moves in just for fun. So

exercise can be fun. And, you know, maybe you'll be the next person that I see dancing their way

out to bring the garbage out in the evening. So with that in mind, you know that I love to

talk a little bit more about the science. I already teased you with that first study,

but I'd like to talk just about a few of the ROIs, the returns on investment for your health,

the benefits for your health, and a little bit of what the research says further about N.E.A.T.,

that non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And there are a few really big areas that are worth

mention. So first, I want to start with the energy and metabolism piece I already talked a little bit

about because that's really the base layer. Then we'll also look at sleep and we'll also look at

brain and mood because those are the places where people feel it most quickly. So one of the reasons

that N.E.A.T. matters so much is that it lives in our everyday. It is really the walking, the standing,

carrying, cleaning, pacing, and fidgeting. They happen all day long. And think of the

cumulative effect of that. It's not just the formal exercise. So in a 2018 review published

in the Journal of Exercise, Nutrition, and Biochemistry, the authors described N.E.A.T. as

a highly variable component of total daily energy expenditure. Let me repeat that again,

as a highly variable component of total daily energy expenditure, meaning that it can be,

you know, all over the map, but it can accumulate. And they noted that low levels of N.E.A.T. were

associated with obesity. So people who do less of the N.E.A.T. activity had higher risk,

it was associated and linked to, not risk, but linked to obesity. And this is interesting because

it helps explain in part why two people can seem to live similarly and have very different body

weight and metabolic patterns. Yes, there are many other factors, but it in part explains this.

It reminds us that our body is paying attention the whole day. Isn't that cool? Isn't that a cool idea

that your body is paying attention to you? And it's not just paying attention to the workout

that you do. So people who naturally move more, including fidgeters, and I've mentioned fidgeters

already because I think that's just so cool, tend to burn more calories too. Now if you're not a

natural fidgeter, you can try fidgeting for a while. You know, I've tried fidgeting more.

You usually, you know, just sort of slow the pace back to how you usually are. But give yourself

credit if you're a fidgeter. If you move, keep it up. If it's not appropriate in that environment,

pick it up when it's back in the other environment that it is. And researchers at the Mayo Clinic

discovered that when people fidget, so think about those serial foot tappers out there,

finger drummers, people who are, you know, doing all those kinds of activities. But

the researchers found that individuals that are fidgeters can burn up to 10 times as many

calories a day as those who don't suffer from involuntary movements. And I say that with a

loving heart because I'm not talking about anything that's a diagnosable condition. I'm

talking about fidgeters that just have fun little habits that are part of their every day,

their move and groove, their rhythm. And I like this because it sort of gives dignity to those

little things. The body is counting when you take the stairs. It's counting when you're doing the

housework. It is counting when you're pacing, when you talk on the phone, and even the fidgeting.

So if you've ever thought, well, that doesn't really count, I would say actually it does.

So the same review also made an important point for real life that traditional efforts that focus

only on the moderate to vigorous activity, you know, the kind where you're doing it in the gym

and trying to get your heart rate up, that they had limited long-term success in some trials,

which is why increasing the low level or lower level daily movement has become such an important

strategy, effectively so much more than the gym. So think of the things that are like even more

than the gym, which is cool. So the question isn't whether or not you should go to the gym

or go outside and get a sort of structured exercise, but it's whether you spend your whole

day, whether your whole day rather has enough motion in it to support the way you want to feel

and live. So this is hopefully a useful reframing and it becomes less about like your fitness

identity and whether you're getting there and how you used to be or how you wish to be,

and more about making your life just a little more physically generous in all the minutes,

you know, throughout the day. And it's the kind of thing that may sound small again, that's why I

keep reiterating it and I'm reinforcing it, but you'll see how it adds up and you'll realize

how it keeps happening day in and day out. In fact, it may be even a superior form of exercise

when it comes to general health and well-being, and that's my lead-in to a review of studies on

sedentary adults published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that found that the amount

of daily activity you get above and beyond 30 minutes of structured exercise could matter

more for your health and longevity than the time spent at the gym. So literally more than the gym.

So again, getting the Surgeon General's recommendations, your activity recommendations

of on average 30 minutes a day important, but your N.E.A.T. may be even a superior form of exercise,

which I think is really, really cool. So the final area I wanted to mention when it comes to the ROIs

or returns on benefit for N.E.A.T. for our ambulation today is the area of the brain and mental health.

A 2024 paper in Nature Human Behavior looked at the causal effects of short sedentary breaks.

That means brief pauses from sitting. Short sedentary breaks is when you stand up and walk

around, for example, and looked at the effects on affective and cognitive outcomes in daily life.

So the researchers found that three-minute sedentary breaks, for example, standing up

from your desk or walking to refill your water and taking a drink, maybe taking the stairs or

taking a lap around the room or space that you're in, improved valence. In plain language, that is

like how pleasant or unpleasant someone feels at a time. And it improved energetic arousal,

like how awake or energized you are versus feeling sluggish. So valence and energetic

arousal were improved, which is very positive. And these were measured with mood rating scales,

self-reported, on how people rate themselves at the moment. They also showed a positive effect

on cognitive state, meaning people were a little more attentive and focused, including our working

memory-related performance, like calling a number to mind quickly or having space to remember,

not multitasking, but being able to manage the to-do list while you're navigating something else

while you're doing it. So that working memory that's happening right now, right here. The authors

were very careful to note that the effects were small and more research is needed to find the

ideal pattern of breaks, which is exactly the kind of science I really honestly appreciate.

But think about the impact that three minutes can make. You've heard before, you know, take a five

minute break every hour or get up from your desk, and maybe you've internalized that and said,

you know, not right now. But if you can have those gains, potentially, and certainly if nothing else,

it just, you know, allows you to breathe, breathe freer and get away from the screen for a moment.

But if you can have those gains, imagine what the cumulative effect of that can be on your

productivity and your mental health and your, you know, all the things, just the day-to-day things

that, you know, challenge us at times when we're seated and still for lengthy durations.

There was also an earlier review in BMJ Open, the British medical journal, on the acute

effects of breaking up prolonged sitting on cognition. And it found that some studies showed

benefits to attention, working memory, like the previous study I mentioned, and cognitive

flexibility. So that's an interesting one, sort of the flexibility of the mind. Although the evidence,

again, was mixed and protocols varied, which is very typical in research. That's why we need a lot

of studies so that we can start, you know, teasing out what really is going on. But it matters

because while we shouldn't oversell this concept, we absolutely should not ignore it. There's enough

research stacking up in a variety of areas. This one, cognition and mental mood, being one of them.

So it's not that, you know, a two-minute walk or a three-minute short break will solve everything

in your whole life and make you, you know, healthy and vital. But a short break can help your brain

come maybe back online more smoothly. And there's definitely other benefits as well.

And honestly, this is really useful for real life, I think. Sometimes we need to sort of give credit,

whereas credit is due and acknowledge it, because then it becomes part of our internal

identity and internal value system and one of the tools in our toolbox. And it's the difference,

maybe, between dragging through the afternoon and feeling like you just have just barely enough

mental room to answer the final email of the day or make that call that, you know, the customer

service, the one more thing on your list, or to remember, you know, why did I walk in the kitchen

in the first place? It puts more value to even those small things and may even bring more focus,

more energy to the success of them as well. So here's the bigger view. A little more movement

through the day may support metabolism, sleep, mental sharpness or mood, but it also helps us

feel a little less glued or stuck to the chair. And that's big. It's a better return on the day

that you're already living by something so simple, simple, simple. Getting up is simple.

You know, actually putting to action, which we'll talk about in a minute,

it takes a tiny bit of energy and effort and reminders to do it. But if I were to say it in

the most simple possible way, the body loves motion. It likes motion and arguably it loves

motion and it likes it all day long. So before we put this into real life, I'll give you some tips.

I have a few for you. I'd like to take today a Mindful Minute together to regroup, reset,

and share a Mindful Minute together and a minute of mindfulness still. It's the opposite of need,

but we're going to give a mental rest to our mind and have a little breathing exercise.

And just as we've been talking about the movement, we'll remember that the pauses count too.

This is a meaningful, easy moment, part of the day, part of the rhythm, part of the whole return

on investment of your 1,000 waking minutes, and that the movements and the non-movements,

they absolutely count. So before I start the timer, get comfortable, uncross your legs if

they're crossed, ground your feet on the floor or whatever surface your feet are on,

let your hands rest beside you, lower your eyelids into a soft gaze. If you're driving,

of course, keep your eyes open and your attention where you need to be, but you can still soften

your shoulders and take a few steady breaths and follow along. So let's take a preparatory breath

in through the nose and exhale through the mouth. And let's begin. We're just taking simple breaths

and let the thoughts that come into your mind perhaps just float. I was picturing the other

day little leaves sort of like resting when they fall onto a lake, they just sort of rest there.

You don't have to follow them, they're just resting and let it pass. As you take some final breaths,

slowly in through your nose, imagine clean, bright light coming into your breath, gentle, clear.

As you breathe out, let go of the dust of the day, anything that feels heavy or cluttered.

Final breath. And there we are. Sometimes just taking a minute to reset can change the whole

feel of the day. Thank you for sharing that Mindful Minute with me. Now let's get into some

practical tips. So we talked about the benefits of moving and making your daily activity count,

ambulation, moving throughout the day. But the counterpoint to all this is there are real health

hazards to being glued to our chairs. Sadly, but not unsurprisingly, a 2019 study found that even

an hour of vigorous exercise at the gym doesn't offset long hours of inactivity. So this is saying

that even if you are getting to the gym, and I just want this is my only doomsday study I want to

share with you, even if you get to the gym, an hour of vigorous exercise at the gym doesn't offset

long hours of inactivity. So we really need to make the N.E.A.T. stuff count. We need to make it practical

and we've got to counter what I'd like to call sitting disease and also make our daily activity

count even more. So to maintain your metabolic health, more consistent movement is clearly needed

throughout the day, threaded through the day, and that's where the N.E.A.T. comes in.

So practical examples and strategies. Tip number one, let's not confuse the invisible

with insignificant. And that was the whole point of telling you about the hotel housekeepers and

some of the other research. One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming that movement

only counts if it looks official. Like it needs the playlist, you need the cool clothing on, the

leggings, you need the whistle. I go to PE every week with my child, with my daughter,

the classmates of PE class and with the coach's whistle. Let's not confuse invisible with

insignificant. A lot of movement hides in plain sight. And that's why I asked you to take an

inventory about the movement you do every day. The ones you enjoy, the ones that are

just passing by. Vacuuming counts, cooking counts, carrying groceries count, walking the dog

counts, taking the stairs counts, playing with your kids counts, even pacing while you're on the phone

counts. And honestly, this is good news because it means that your life is already full. It contains

more movement than you realize. You just haven't been maybe giving yourself the credit that credit

is due. So think of it more like a puzzle or a patchwork quilt that you're building together,

little pieces that you stitch together so that the trip upstairs or standing while you're chopping

vegetables that you can be, well, watch the knife, but you can be moving, that the movement counts.

You're folding laundry, you're walking across the parking lot. Register in your mind that this is

part of your need. Taking the long way. The moments don't have to be dramatic. You can make

them more dramatic if you choose, but they do create a different metabolic picture than a day that's

all still. And that's when we start to notice that movement is really hiding in plain sight at times.

So the second tip is about interruption. Interrupt your sitting before it totally settles in.

You know, this is not a good thing to do in a conversation,

interruption that is, but it is good when making movement count more. So one easy shift is interrupt

your sitting more often. Another thing I talked about before, those little sedentary breaks,

the three minute body resistance exercise. Maybe you've even heard that, you know,

there's been some headlines that say sitting is the new smoking. Sitting is the new smoking. I

mean, sound dramatic? Sure. But there's actually some truth underneath it that research is showing

that people who exercise regularly can still feel the effects of sitting for long stretches without

interruption. It can be harmful to your health. So every 30 to 60 minutes, give your body a small

reminder of some kind that it was designed to move. Refill your water. I'm stating certain

things again and again so they start imprinting on your mind. Walk while making a phone call.

It's such a great thing. You've probably got earbuds. Maybe sit with your earbuds in and just

sit at your desk. Get up. You can move away from the phone, actually. It's probably not even

connected to the wall anymore. Take a lap around the house. Run upstairs instead of texting someone

downstairs. Run up to do it. Go talk to a co-worker in real life instead of sending an email if you

happen to be in office. The tiny interruptions, the tiny course corrections, they all count

and they add up. Another strategy that I love, and I've mentioned this in other episodes about

behaviors, is layering or aligning. Layer your movement into things that you're already doing.

If you're brushing your teeth, sure, your arm is being active and you're moving the toothbrush,

but maybe you can shift your weight and do some calf raises while you're doing it,

or you can do some squats or leg lifts when you're blowing your hair in the morning.

If you're waiting for the water to boil, something that I found myself before

making some tea in the morning or boiling water for other purposes,

you can stretch. You can walk around the kitchen. You can put something away and let it count,

really. If you're watching a show, do something while you're watching the show. It's great to

relax, lay back, put your feet up if you've had a long day, but instead of dissolving completely

into the couch, the N.E.A.T. around you, make it part of your natural habitat. We are animals of a

wonderful sort. Instead of creating the exercise, this is exercise as punishment, movement woven

into your life can be a celebration. The next tip is inspired by what I see children do all the time.

There's actually research to support this. I won't go into that today, but allow yourself to be a

little less efficient. Wow, efficiency is like my word of the year in so many other realms,

but this is something that I want to share when it comes to N.E.A.T. and the exercise that we thread

through our day. Kids do this naturally. Kids zigzag. They wonder. Man, it takes a long time.

You have to be patient. Let me just put it that way. If you say, could you go grab the

name? Could you go get the keys? Could you go put that away? Whatever it is

you're sending them to, they take 12 extra steps to accomplish one thing. They go here before

they go there. Then they tell you they're on their way. They're actually trying.

Adults become very streamlined. We sort of set our sights like, what are the least number of steps?

We conserve every step. What's the least number of steps I can do to get to those keys and get back?

Maybe the few extra steps are not actually an efficiency. Maybe they are the opportunity.

That is the park farther away instead of continuously circling to wait for that person

up front to leave. I mean, just go park. You would have been in the store already.

Carry the groceries yourself when you can. Take an extra loop before you go into a place.

Walk the sidewalk of the shopping mall or take a loop around the grocery store before you

dive in, if you have a moment to do that. Use a basket instead of a cart once in a while,

if you can, or start with the basket. You might find that it fills up and then you've got to

walk back and get the cart. If you forget something upstairs, which I do,

treat it as a get instead of have to, or oh, phooey, I forgot it, or something that is a

failure on your part. You get to run back up and get it. Lucky you. If you forgot something

in the house, you get to run back in and get it. You get to move a little more before getting

into your commute or on your way. Of course, I don't always embrace this with the same level

of enthusiasm. I mean, no one likes to forget their things or have to make another trip back in,

but if it happens, and invariably it happens to all of us, recognize that it counts for good

in another way. There's a different side bonus, so to speak, so it doesn't have to feel so rough.

And certainly, you know, this being inefficient, which is the opposite of what I strive for in other

areas in my life, as I mentioned, and it can be lauded when it comes to our bodies a little,

but not every movement needs to become a workout is the point, but movement does count and your body

responds to rhythm and to repetition, is the word I'm searching for, to that accumulated motion.

And that's the last tip. Think of movement as your daily rhythm, not as a workout. My spouse,

Jason, would appreciate that comment. I think he'll appreciate that, the rhythm of life,

because that really is the beauty of Ambulate. You know, you don't have to be a different person

to move more. You don't need to overhaul your life. You don't need a color-coded fitness calendar.

You don't need suddenly to have an urge to train or to, you know, enter a competitive race. Those

are all cool things I can talk about on another day. If you're interested in doing those,

you can pursue those, but you just need your ordinary life, your wonderful, extraordinary

ordinary life to contain a little more motion. And I think if we sometimes treat movement

like it counts, that it doesn't have to fit in one official block, it means more.

The body will see it that way. The body responds to it that way. All those things you're doing,

the errands, the standing at the counter, the marching, the chasing after your child,

all of those, we need that perspective to take into our lives because it all creates activities

and it sends signals to our body and to our brain. And I find that really reassuring,

and I hope you do too. So the movement, turning the movement you do into like the rhythm of your life

and less as pass-fail, you know, it's an ongoing conversation. It's the song that you're creating,

the lyrics that you're creating, the motion that you're creating in your life. Instead of being

parked in one position, you need a little bit of staccato, you need a little bit of forte,

you need a little bit of piano, you need all the things that stretch through your life.

And it can be really awesome. So this is not to say one more time that structured exercise

is not absolutely wonderful, but today we're talking about the small movements of life.

And the truth again is that the human body was designed to move regularly. Regularly

being the word that sometimes gets dropped off. It's designed to move regularly, and we know this.

Over time, the ordinary moments of our day can be a part of how we self-care, how we care for

ourselves. So in close for today, I think and I what I hope that stays with you is that movement

woven into our daily life is a life skill, you know. Ambulate is a life skill. Ambulate that

kind of that word that seems to hail from like some kind of Victorian dictionary of yesteryear

is a life skill. It's not the gym assignment. And if we think of movement that lies in between

the moments of the day, fidgeting, I want to say it one more time because when will I get to say

fidgeting again in the episodes unless I bring it up again, which I hope to. But these little

bits of motion mean something. We can get more from our sedentary windows of our day which make up

a lot of those waking minutes at time and literally reclaim some of the ordinariness of that as

metabolically, mentally meaningful. You can do that. I can do that. And health is built in the

actual day you're living. That's the minutes, our life's currency in all those things that you're

doing and the shape that it takes. So maybe that's why it matters so much right now and why

I'm talking so much about it. So many of us spend our time seated behind screens, staring at them,

important things on our screens, hopefully accomplishing things, but rushing mentally

while remaining physically still. That almost brings tears to my eyes thinking about that.

Hmm, interesting. So our body keeps asking for movement, physical movement, even if our mental

game is strong and it's rushing about. And it will probably put some ease to some of that tension

that happens up there as well. I'll leave you with this. The Canadian novelist Robertson Davies

once wrote, the eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. The eye sees only what

the mind is prepared to comprehend. If I can extend this to what we're talking about, hopefully

you now know clearly why this is so important in your eyes and your internal, your brain,

comprehend how important this is. And I think once you understand, once one understands the value of

these smaller moments of movement, like the hotel housekeepers, back to that one, like the standing

or walking conversations, taking the long way, giving our emotions credit, you will see and feel

the impact on your health. Your circulation and energy may improve. It may support better sleep.

It may give your brain, your mood, a boost. Think of that. And over time, this will become part of

your life. You may need some reminders and I'll give you those, but you may be able to move through

the world with a little more strength and energy and ease. So I want to thank you for sharing your

waking minutes with me today, some of them, your waking minutes with me today. Before I get up and

take a couple loops around and get myself moving, I wanted to remind you that you can find me at

wendybazilian.com. Please join on Instagram at @1000WakingMinutes. And I'd be grateful if you

share it with a friend who might enjoy it too. So that's all for today. I'm Dr. Wendy Bazilian,

your host of 1,000 Waking Minutes. And until next time, be well.

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