“Work out 912 minutes per day or you’ll die.”
“If you don’t do at least 42 pushups every hour for the next 65 hours, you’ll lose muscle mass!”
“30 minutes of cardio per day or else.”
“10,000 steps per day is needed to maintain a healthy lifestyle.”
Newsflash, all of those stats are FAKE.
I wrote a blog on the 10,000 steps per day a while ago, you can read it here. But, I’ll summarize it too….
Real talk, the 10,000-step goal has no scientific backing and isn't real. It was thought to be created by a Japanese company that was selling pedometers in 1965. I-Min Lee, A professor of Epidemiology at Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health, looked into the beginning of how this started, and she believes, after having conversations with Japanese researchers that the character of 10,000 looks similar to a man walking. Boom. Branding on point for that company, they started a pedometer revolution.
So, the 10,000 steps should honestly sound just as absurd as all the other statements above.
It’s no secret that our work lives have started to deteriorate our mental and physical health, hell….that’s why most of us do yoga. Recently, NPR wrote an article about this exact thing - it’s honestly what inspired this email and revisit to the blog post. A reminder that a lot of what we see is all marketing.
Due to the pandemic, we had a major shift from in-office to work-from-home, and that came with a bunch of consequences (good and bad.) As technology has advanced, our ability to prioritize our health and movement behaviors hasn’t. We’ve become more sedentary and less purposeful.
NPR says we now are on electronic devices for an average of 11 hours per day. HOLY F*CKING SH*T, that’s like a lot of hours. That’s more than an average school day of 8am to 3pm, by like A LOT.
Columbia University Medical Center released a study showing that walking about 5 minutes every half hour can offset the harmful effects of sedentary deskwork/lifestyle. You can view the study here.
What’s next …. NPR is trying to figure out, how likely is someone to actually walk 5 minutes every 30 minutes.
Ask yourself this question: Am I likely to dedicate 5 minutes of each half hour to mindful movement?
If you said YES, I’d love to know if you meditate daily. Do you incorporate at least 5 minutes of meditation into your 24-hour routine? Because like if not…(insert - emoji)
If NO, ask yourself if you are willing to dedicate at least 5 minutes per day to SOMETHING = meditation, movement, journaling, etc.
I’m not asking you to have the same schedule as Beyonce, I’m asking you to look at your life and notice how saying YES to 5 minutes can create impactful change.
You got this.
If you want to participate in NPR’s survey and study, you can do so here.