Exercise Snacking™

Sneaking Fitness into Your Life through Exercise Snacking™

By Shalaine McLaughlin

While this might be the zillionth diet and/or exercise webpage you’ve seen, my aim is to give you an easy, and more importantly, sustainable substitutions to get healthier. Teach you to build fitness into their lives a tiny bit at a time. Make fitness bite sized.

The 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans (PAG) by the US Department of Health & Human Services[1]recommends that adult should get at least 150 minutes of exercise a week. That’s incredibly daunting for people who don’t exercise at all. Most can’t begin to figure out how to build that time into their lives. So many people need to get healthier and yet can’t find the enthusiasm, motivation, or time to go to the gym for an hour, let alone doing it three times a week.

My solution is Exercise Snacking™. 

No, it’s not about eating while exercising! It’s the concept of taking small, even tiny, bites of exercise, instead of making large “meals” out of exercise. We’ve been seeing a trend and will continue to see it in the news more often. Good Morning America, Psychology Today, The New York Times, GQ, and Dr. Oz, all featured variations of this topic recently.

My goal is to teach you to find the small bits of time we waste daily (like when waiting for the microwave or brushing our teeth) and use simple additions to build fitness into their daily lives regardless of their lifestyle. Building on the trends of micro-habits, making actions that require minimal motivation or effort to complete but builds up to be significant, and using NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis). 

My aim is to show you how to move and tips and tricks to make it a new way of life. More importantly, break down the science and make it relatable so you understand the WHY. Sneak in fitness like they sneak vegetables in lasagna, but for much better results. 

Starting with 1-3-7. One minute, three times a day, seven days per week.

I also explain the side effects of most common posture dysfunctions and how to help fix them, corrective or “counteractive exercises.” How to do common exercises safely for people currently not exercising. People can choose safe, low impact movements that would maximize benefit for deconditioned people with disabilities or physical limitations.

Fitness shouldn’t have to involve demanding, complicated exercises. I won’t ask anyone to do the dreaded sit ups (bad for lower back), jumping jacks (high impact), curtsy lunges (overstretch knee ligaments), or traditional burpees (head below chest & many other reasons). It doesn’t have to involve long hours in the gym or any equipment to see improvement. 

I want to show you how to add fitness specific to your life, in your home, with minimal time and with no additional equipment, with a small shift in thinking and more efficient effort.

[1] https://health.gov/sites/default/files/2019-09/Physical_Activity_Guidelines_2nd_edition.pdf