The other day I went over an article in the Washington Post about a new study about “active couch potatoes”.
What is that one? you may think. It looks like active couch potatoes are those who work out for 30 minutes every day as recommended by official guidelines such as the Center for Disease Control (that’s why they are called “active”) but then sit down pretty much the rest of their day, working at a desk or even standing up but without moving (and that’s for the “couch potato” part of it).
And the study shows that active couch potatoes have higher blood sugar, cholesterol level and body fat altogether. Meaning that even if they meet the official recommendations of 350 minutes of weekly moderate activity, this is not enough. What makes really a difference is getting up every hour or so and move, stroll, or walk, even lightly.
And (spoiler alert!) that’s exactly what I recommend my students who want to use the power of walking. I recommend to them to not aiming at a 30 minute or more walk daily, but instead stand up and walk a little bit every hour.
To me, there are 2 lessons in this:
First: it’s amazing how science shows us that the popular wisdom is stronger than some ideas that look good on the paper but don’t work in reality. In other words we are moving creatures and we can’t replace that by some demanding, high level activity every now and then,
And second: you don’t need to suffer to get health benefits or to lose weight!
Life is too short to suffer! But this doesn’t mean that you should become an actual couch potato (not even active 😊) It just means that regular moderate efforts pay off more than high intensity efforts every now and then.
So don’t underestimate the power of walking. The benefit / effort ratio is one of the highest one I know!