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An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Eating alone will not keep a man well; he must also take exercise.
—HIPPOCRATES
IN BRIEF: While exercise is very important, extreme exercise might be overrated. Research suggests moderate exercisers can be at least as healthy, and sometimes even healthier, as those who exercise excessively, and the link between weight loss and intense workouts may be overestimated. Little things, like a brisk short walk or a standing desk, can make a big difference. Exercise is extremely healthy, and not exercising is not a good idea, so just do it, but don’t feel compelled to overdo it. Get off your duff throughout the day. Find physical activities you enjoy, like walking, jogging, running, or bicycling; then do one several times a week for fun.
It’s time for the lazy to proudly stand . . . er . . . raise their fists in the air in a slow, not overly strenuous show of solidarity. A growing—but not overly ripped—body of research has found that although exercise has health benefits, certain levels of extreme exercise do not add to your overall well-being and may even hinder it.
So skip your predawn decathlon, and sit back and enjoy some guilt-free relaxation as we make a high-energy case for the benefits of moderate-energy workouts. In 2015, Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association, published one of the biggest studies to look at the effects of too much exercise, which they defined as any type of exercise that causes sweating or a fast heartbeat engaged in more than two to three times a week. The results were heart-stopping—sometimes literally. Researchers looked at 1.1 million women age fifty to sixty-four and tracked their cardiovascular health for nine years.
To nobody’s surprise, the study showed that exercise was indeed good for you, but only to a point. Moderate exercisers experienced dramatically fewer adverse vascular events (any health complications affecting the circulatory system) compared to nonexercisers. At four to seven strenuous sessions a week, exercisers experienced increased adverse vascular effects. Even when it came to nonstrenuous exercise, including gardening and housework, four to six days a week was best, and seven days a week was associated with a rise in vascular troubles.1
Counterintuitive as it may sound, this study is in keeping with other research indicating diminishing returns on extreme exercise for men and women. A 2018 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that on exercise days, people “had more physical activity energy expenditure, but because of reductions in other activities, only about half of the energy expended during exercise was added to total daily physical activity energy expenditure.”2
An earlier report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that runners who pounded the pavement too often and too strenuously saw rapid declines in benefits and even adverse effects from the extreme exercise. The study of 1,098 healthy joggers and 3,950 healthy non-joggers in Denmark over a twelve-year period concluded that too little running or too much running was linked to higher rates of death.3
In an article about the study, Time magazine declared the proper level of exercise was a Goldilocks amount, one just right to maintain heart health, burn calories, and keep blood sugar levels under control, but according to the researchers behind this study, “that sweet spot is closer to the ‘less’ side of the curve than the ‘more’ side.”4
The scientists concluded that the ideal pace to jog was about five miles per hour and that it was best to jog about three times per week. That’s a decent amount of movement, but it’s certainly not the regimen marathon victories are made of. In general, runners, including long-distance runners, are often much healthier than those who are sedentary. So don’t hesitate to not only skip but bike or run to the gym as well.
We want to make something crystal clear before we go forward: For every study showing a possible risk from strenuous exercise, there are dozens showing the importance of exercise overall. The takeaway from this chapter is that people need not engage in extreme exercise for health. Moderate, more doable exercise for many is full of health benefits. Sitting for long periods of time is unhealthy, but when it comes to exercise, a little bit can go a long way.
Researchers have begun looking at micro-workouts—short, intense exercises with positive results. A group of fourteen sedentary men and women were studied while engaging in what’s been called the one-minute workout. Participants spent ten minutes three times a week on stationary bikes. They would warm up by cycling slowly for two minutes, bike as hard they could for twenty-second intervals, followed by two minutes of slower cycling, until they had biked fast for a total of a minute. Then they’d cool down for three minutes. After six weeks, participants had improved their endurance by about 12 percent and had better blood work.5
Beyond short bursts of intense activity, not being sedentary is just as important. Many recent studies have sung the praises of standing desks. Spending some of the workday pacing or walking in place or on a treadmill at your desk, rather than sitting at it, promotes movement and limits our time sitting. This is all good, since long durations of uninterrupted sitting have been linked to an increased chance of death.6
When it comes to exercise, walking is often wrongly overlooked as not intense enough. Walking is one of our favorite forms of exercise and offers a plethora of health benefits. The effect of regular short walks adds up, helping us burn calories and improve overall health. Try to take walks during your lunch break or suggest a “walking meeting” instead of the standard conference room meeting. Look for the parking space farthest from your destination and take the stairs instead of the elevator when you can. Little things add up. Hiking in the woods offers even more benefits.
Walking also can improve our mental health and help us relax. The Japanese practice of “forest bathing” is increasingly popular in the United States. The idea behind the practice is that instead of just hiking, people go outside and enjoy nature in a mindful, relaxed manner. Spending time in the forest this way may have a profound effect. As the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy points out, “Physical activity in the form of a 40-minute walk in the forest” has been “associated with improved mood and feelings of health and robustness.” In “a 2007 study, men taking two-hour walks in the woods over a two-day period exhibited a 50 percent increase in levels of natural killer cells—the body’s disease fighting agents.” One 2008 study of thirteen female nurses on a three-day forest-bathing trip found “the trip produced anti-cancer proteins and benefits lasting more than 7 days after the trip.”7
More research is needed, since the extent of the benefits is unclear, as is the role of the forest itself. Some believe, for example, that the natural chemicals secreted by evergreen trees, collectively called phytoncides, are specifically helping the immune system. In that case, how much nature would be needed to enjoy the benefits of forest bathing? Would a park work? At this time we don’t know. But it seems a safe bet to us that spending time outside in nature, or as close to nature as we can get if we live in a city, is a good idea. Whenever you can, walk barefoot on the beach, grass, or forest paths. Look, smell, and feel the natural world around you.
Now it’s time to address the 800-pound-but-on-a-wheat-free-diet gorilla in the room—weight loss. Let’s be honest, when it comes to exercise, especially excessive exercise, most of us are more concerned with appearance than health. But despite what the people touting the latest over-the-top intense exercise regime would lead you to believe, exercise and weight loss appear only casually linked—if they were people, they would be Facebook friends but wouldn’t really know why.
In a study published in Population Health Metrics in 2013, researchers found that physical activity increased between 2001 and 2009, particularly in Kentucky, Georgia, and Florida, but the rise in exercise was matched by an increase in obesity in nearly every county the researchers studied, even with controls for changing rates in poverty, unemployment, and other metrics.8
A possible reason exercise doesn’t have as big an effect on weight loss as we believe it should is that as exercise burns calories, it can increase our appetites, causing us to eat more. We also might rationalize eating more after we exercise—you know, the whole “I went to the gym and exercised for eight minutes, so now I’m going to enjoy that bacon burger with eighteen pounds of fries on the side.”
When we engage in this type of thinking, we often tip the caloric scale in the wrong direction. As Aseem Malhotra, a cardiologist, wrote in The Washington Post, “If you exercise for the purpose of burning calories, you get a very low return on investment: You would have to walk for more than 45 minutes to burn off the 300 calories from eating just three cookies.”
On top of that, Malhotra argues that the notion that physical activity increases our metabolism, so our bodies consume calories at a quicker rate, is exaggerated. He points to a 2012 study where anthropologists measured the daily physical activity, metabolic rates, and energy expenditure of people in a hunter-gatherer tribe in Tanzania, and compared the results to the average Westerner. The Tanzanians were, as expected, much more physically active, but their metabolic rates were similar to their more sedentary counterparts in the West. The other problem with extreme exercise regimes is that even if they’re working to keep weight down, they often come to abrupt ends and are followed by rapid and unhealthy weight gain.9
Though couch potatoes may be jumping for joy—except of course that would involve, you know, getting off the couch and exerting themselves—this doesn’t mean you should trade the treadmill for the sofa. Exercise overwhelmingly has been shown to be very healthy for most people, whereas prolonged sitting is decidedly very, very unhealthy. Interestingly, this even seems to be true for newborn infants, who often spend way too much time sitting on their back in car seats or strollers.10
Like so much else in this book, the secret when it comes to exercise is, well, common sense. It might not always lead to significant weight loss by itself, but paired with a nonextreme diet, it will make you a lot healthier. Don’t feel guilty because you’re not jumping on an exercise bike seven days a week and have yet to set any land speed records. Instead of driving to the gym, take a long walk to the neighborhood coffeehouse. When it comes to health, it appears slow and steady (or intervals of slow and steady alternating with short fast bursts) may actually win the race.