So what’s all the fuss about 10,000 steps? Do you have friends, relatives, or coworkers wearing pedometers and obsessively tracking their steps to get their number in each day? Well, it’s actually not as silly as it may sound. Non-exercise movement is crucial to maintaining our mobility, optimizing health, and losing weight.
If you work out hard several times per week that’s fantastic. There are health benefits for certain. However, if you are sedentary for the rest of the time it will be very challenging to drop pounds and be healthy. You have to move outside the gym too. Being sedentary (i.e. sitting a lot of the time) has been shown to have multiple adverse impacts on health. Some of the most common are back pain, poor posture, tight hips, and reduced mobility.
There are a myriad of small changes you can make to increase your activity. A few ideas are taking frequent walks, doing stretching and mobility work, hiking, gardening, standing at home to do tasks where you normally sit, taking the stairs instead of elevators, and parking away from the store so you have to walk farther. These seem like small changes yet they will make a significant impact on your weight loss efforts and overall wellness.
