The Wellness Column

—by Matt from Crossfit Orillia

As you’re reading this, regardless of whether you work out regularly, you may still be classified as “sedentary”.

That’s right. Even if you work out five days a week, you could still fall into that category of sedentary. I know it may seem impossible, but when we look at the numbers, you’ll see it starts to make sense.

 In today’s busy world of hustle and grind culture it can be easy to forget that we still only have 24 hours in a single day. How you spend those hours are quite important because after all, there’s only 24 of them.

When many folks start a new health and fitness routine, they forget to look outside the block of time that they use to “work out” (I use quotation marks to encompass anything that could be “working out” for you) and fail to realize the other blocks of time may tip the scales towards sedentary and away from active.

Get Those Steps In
The simplest and most effective assessment and solution is to look at your total steps. 8500 a day is ideal, 10,000 is fantastic, 5,000 or less? Well, we’d want to see those up a little higher.

So, if someone worked out 5 days a week at 6 am, that’s a great routine.

But maybe after that workout, they get into a car and drive to Markham. They sit at their desk, getting up occasionally for a coffee refill, lunch, chatter, back to the desk, then back in the car to get home. Rinse and repeat.

If we were to look at that person’s daily activity, yes, they did a 6 am workout, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see their steps may be under 5,000 for the day because of all those other sedentary hours. 

As I write this it’s a Tuesday morning and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I don’t need to be at CrossFit Orillia until the afternoons, or sometimes not at all. No surprise however, on those days my steps are way under. I’m currently sitting at 2,000 steps for the day at 11:49 am. Comparatively, when I do work at the CrossFit gym I will hit 10,000 steps before noon.

The thing to focus on here is while it can be easy to focus on the days that we do get the steps in, forgetting that the days that you’re under (some days I’m way under) can throw off your weekly average. 

Like all things in life, balance and consistency is key. Steps are such a great indicator because they encourage us to make smaller choices more throughout the day, rather than cram them all in at once. There’s no benefit to trying to do one long walk a day (even a 5km run). The trick is to focus on moving a little bit more throughout the day, rather than all at once.

Some simple tips: walk the kids to school, walk in to get Tim’s, park farther away from your destination, set a timer as a reminder. 

Aim to get 8500 steps a day and you would be surprised how much of an impact that can have on your wellness, mindfulness, and stress management.

Happy Stepping!