Your steps aren’t exercise. 

     Electronics these days make it easier than ever to track our fitness.  Everyone seems to have an app or watch that they enter their goals, current weight, height, gender, and age and it’s put into an equation and your plan is spit back out at you.  It even tells you how many steps to take, how many calories are burned with these steps, and reminds you to move!  While movement throughout the day is important this cannot be considered exercise. 

     Exercise is defined as planned, structured, and repetitive physical activity to condition the body. There are certain rules for exercise to work- it needs to be in certain parameters for it to be effective and safe.  We see the best results within these guidelines, and they are tested, proven, researched, and true.  Our fitness apps that track our steps are a good reminder to move throughout the day- which it’s recommended to move around at least once an hour, if not every 30 minutes- but this movement is called NEAT.  NEAT is an acronym that stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis; the calories burned from movement throughout the day the is not considered exercise. While this increases your calorie burn for the day and gets your blood flowing, it is not consistent enough nor is it at a high enough intensity to stimulate similar response and adaptation that planned and consistent exercise does. 

     As a fitness professional I have often heard this: “I don’t need cardio, I walk a lot at work.” “I’m constantly moving, we even have stairs at home!” “I go on a walk every night with my dog.” Well, unless you are trucking it with Rover at a pace where you are slightly out of breath then it is just NEAT.  Dogs stop and sniff things. They have to potty.  Also, your small dog likely could not keep up well with a full-sized adult if the adult is actually stressing their self (exercise is stress) enough for it to be considered fitness. You might walk a lot at work as a server, nurse, etc. However, you are constantly stopping for periods of time, and it’s not long enough for adaptation.  Also, I doubt that you are out of breath between tables or patients.  The stairs in your house might be a daily nemesis but they are not exercise either unless you decide you are going to tackle them for 20-30 minutes a day. Furthermore, your body adapts to whatever stress you put on it daily so it is likely already accustomed to your movement patterns and will see no more adaptation from it. This even includes myself as a fitness instructor.  I am not working to capacity in my classes and my body is already adapted from that stress.  Therefore, I even have to plan my own fitness aside from what I do with others. 

     Your step counter is also likely not accurate.  I like in South Carolina where we have as many potholes as mosquitos. My tracker watch would tell me congratulations on hitting a goal while driving because of the constant jolt of the roads.  If you talk with your hands it’s giving you steps.  Eating, writing, and typing could even be giving you more steps.  More steps means that it is also telling you that you have burned more calories.  More calories “burned” means an inaccurate calorie equation and your weight goal results are now skewed.  Maybe you are even taking in too many calories based on what your watch says you have burned.  I learned somewhere in my degree that running 6 miles at a ten-minute pace is about 500 calories.  Use that as a judgement- can you run a ten-minute mile?  The average person has about 2000 steps per mile, so for your 10k steps or 5 miles did you do so at a 6 MPH pace?  When you look at your watch it says you’ve burned 800 calories that generally going to be incorrect.  Now, calories burned depends on many different variables. As an average though this information is going to be incorrect. Simply being on your feet is better than being stationary, yet it is not enough to be considered fitness or even exercise.

     Plan your exercise.  The American College of Sports Medicine or ACSM says that the general population needs about 90-150 minutes weekly (depending on intensity) of cardiovascular exercise for adaptation and health. We also need strength training and range of motion weekly as well; it takes all of the above for health, weight management, and fitness along with proper nutrition(carbs are not your enemy your couch is). This amount of time can be split pretty much however- 30 minutes 5 times a week, 50 minutes 3 times, or one huge day of half marathon distance as long as it is at an intensity that is challenging but not overwhelming.  A good judgement is being able to carry on a conversation but not with ease- you should be able to speak, pausing to take a breath periodically as you do so.  Great forms of cardiovascular exercise include running, walking (again, intensity is key), skating, cycling, swimming- anything where you are challenging your body in a consistent and continuous manner.  No, lifting weights faster or keeping a high heart rate during weight training is not, was not, will never be cardio. Also, don’t give me any crap about not having time for fitness- if you can tell me what is going on in any current television show you have time to exercise.  And like I always say, “If you don’t make time you will run out of time.”