Nutrition Fundamentals: Movement

Do you feel like you're caught in a constant dieting loop?

Over the past few weeks we’ve outlined two of our three “fundamentals” (protein & food quality). These are fundamental habits that tend to underpin whether one achieves and sustains their health and fitness goals. Most people try to run (if not sprint) before they can walk. "Running" into the latest fitness trend or dieting protocol inherently leads to falling off track and in turn constantly getting caught in a loop of stop/start.

When it comes to behaviour change, you’re dealing with a life long marathon. Try sprinting a marathon and see how far you get (lol). Focusing on fundamental habits (walking) tends to get more sustainable results even if it does take a little longer to get there.

The third and final habit that we categorise into our fundamentals is Movement. If you’ve been following us on Instagram you would’ve noticed the “Daily Movement” story pop up which typically consists of some kind of walk in the morning.

With our lifestyles becoming more time poor, this is leading to us finding faster ways to get more done. An unfortunate byproduct of this, is inactivity. To get to places faster, we take the car. To get more work done, we stay at the desk for longer. We get a promotion, which leads to more meetings (and not of the walking kind). To relax after all of this, we sit on the couch.

We all know that activity is important, however if I asked you to list all of the ways you have been physically active this week most of you would give examples like going to the gym, going for a run, or attending a group class.

We tend to hyper-focus on doing “formal exercise” rather than daily movement much like we would hyper-focus on following a diet rather than adopting better eating habits. We try to run before we've established a base of walking. As we’ve said before, it’s not what you do when everything is going well that matters nearly as much as what you do when you can no longer do what's 'optimal'.

“We don’t rise to level of our goals, we fall the levels of our systems”

- James Clear

So what does it mean to build a foundation of daily movement? Simply, it’s just doing something, daily. I don’t want you to use the following guidelines as a barrier. At the end of the day something is better than nothing.

At its core our rule of daily movement stems from the guideline of achieving a minimum of 7000 steps per day. That is because all health outcomes tend to improve once someone has achieved at least 7000 steps per day. We can better categorise this by age into the following:

>60 years: 6,000-8,000 steps per day

<60 years: 8,000-10,000 steps per day

That is not to say that everyone should only do 7000 steps per day. Think of this as an entry fee. A buy-in, for health. If you aren’t doing 7000 steps per day, try finding ways that you can get 7000 steps. And if you are doing more, great, you need not worry.

Tracking your daily steps can be a great tool if you have a wearable device or even just carry your phone around with you most of the day. However, there is just as much benefit seen in accumulating 45-60mins of movement throughout the day (this doesn’t need to be in one session). So don’t let technology stand in your way. Try going for a walk at lunch time. Adopting walking meetings. If you can, invest in a standing desk, or bargain for one. Park further away every time you go to the grocery store or to a shop. You’ll be surprised how much this all adds up.

Having a base of daily movement prevents the typical all or nothing that occurs when we can’t get to the gym, out for a run, or to that group fitness class. When you would otherwise resort to nothing, you are still doing something. This doing something means that you are still active when you are unable to exercise. Doing something not only has a profound effect on your overall energy expenditure (calories burnt in a day), but also psychologically. Psychologically because it allows you to maintain momentum. Momentum that prevents the loop of dichotomous behaviour. All/nothing. Stop/start.

Do something, when you would otherwise do nothing.

Move daily.