Wellness Wednesday – Calling all “Desk-athletes”

By: Ed Lippie

Virtually everyone reading this is a “desk athlete,” meaning that even if you are a regular exerciser, you most likely spend multiple hours per day at a desk looking at screens, doing some version of 21st-century work. Which stimulates an interesting question, should a distinction be made between sedentary and non-active? I would argue yes.

Within that distinction, most people living today in Westernized countries in the northern hemisphere would be classified as sedentary, including me, despite being very active. Why do these distinctions matter? Understanding and addressing the important differences is fundamental to building a healthy lifestyle.

Checking your four exercise boxes designed to extend lifespan and enhance health span:

• Strength training that integrates mobility & stability
• Higher intensity cardiorespiratory work intended to improve Vo2Max
• Lower intensity cardiorespiratory work designed to increase aerobic capacity
• Play (racquet sports, basketball, skiing, hiking, etc.)

But as important as those four boxes are, checking them off is not enough to combat the hours we spend seated doing our work. Here are some evidence-based strategies that deploy three important concepts:

1. VILPA (Vigorous Intermittent Lifestyle Physical Activity)
2. NEAT (Non-Exercise Active Thermogenesis)
3. Exercise Snacks

VILPA is simply doing things we already do in our daily lives differently and/or more vigorously. For example, taking the stairs instead of the elevator. For those of us in the Boston office, taking the stairs from the first to the 7th floor helps us log approximately 90 seconds of VILPA. A recent long-term study published in December 2023 revealed that 3-4 minutes of daily VILPA decreased All-Cause Mortality by an incredible 25%.

NEAT is similar to VILPA in the sense that it is unstructured and done in the course of daily activities. However, it does not need to be done “vigorously.” In other words, NEAT does not significantly change your respiratory rate. Examples include easy walking over flat grades, house cleaning, yard work, etc. The accumulation of NEAT calories burned has been shown to improve metabolic function and contribute to a healthy weight.

Exercise “snacks” are one to five-minute breaks from work, including light to moderate activity. Examples include squats, push-ups, jumping jacks, lunges, wall sits, etc. The idea is to increase blood flow and metabolic rate. Exercise snacks have the added benefit of temporarily improving cognitive output and can be a successful tactic for improving short-term productivity.

So, how would you incorporate these concepts into your day?

• Take the stairs instead of elevators or escalators (briskly, if possible)
• Consciously thinking about moving more, parking further from store entrances to increase your step count
• When seated at your desk, simply standing up every 15 minutes helps combat muscle stiffness
• If you workout in the morning, build in one 1-5 minute exercise snack in the afternoon
• If you workout in the afternoon, build in one 1-5 minute exercise snack in the morning
• Stretch for 5 minutes in the evening as a wind-down activity; you can do it while watching your favorite show

As a species, our lifestyles have evolved much faster than our biology, creating a significant misalignment between access to daily caloric supply and a level of activity that ensures proper energy balance. Acknowledging this reality by creatively incorporating more movement into our daily routines is critical to achieving and maintaining optimal health.