You’re surely familiar with the idea that humans spend a lot more time sitting than they used to. If you haven’t heard the statistics — the average American sits for 9-10 hours a day — you’ve experienced it in your life, finding yourself spending long stretches of your work and leisure time sedentary in office chairs and on couches.

You’re probably also familiar with the ill effects all this sitting can have on both our bodies and minds: higher blood pressure, higher blood sugar, impaired metabolic health, anxiety, and depression.

As Manoush Zomorodi, author of Body Electric, shared on the AoM podcast, one of the big effects of spending a lot of time sitting is, ironically enough, feeling unaccountably tired. This, despite the fact that you haven’t done anything physical. Sitting saps your energy and makes you feel strangely fatigued.   

You might hope that the 3-mile run you do in the morning or the lifting session you get in after work will counteract the effects of excessive sitting. But while it does help, working out for one hour doesn’t erase the consequences of spending ten hours sedentary. Even among people who exercise, long bouts of uninterrupted sitting are still associated with worse metabolic and cardiovascular outcomes. And being too sedentary — even if punctuated by sessions at the gym — is still a drag on our mood.

Fortunately, the solution doesn’t require upping your exercise time 10X. Instead, you can combat the ill effects of sitting by peppering your day with surprisingly small movement “snacks.”

The Outsized Power of 5-Minute Movement Breaks

In seeking to improve her health and reenergize her routine, Zomorodi came across research from Keith Diaz, a physiologist at Columbia University Medical Center, that investigated how much movement the human body needs to mitigate the effects of prolonged sitting. 

In one study, five minutes of walking every half hour helped offset increases in blood glucose and blood pressure, while reducing fatigue and improving mood. The walking wasn’t even strenuous; the treadmill was set to about two miles per hour.

Zomorodi then tried the protocol herself. On one day, she spent eight hours sitting and working with only normal breaks every few hours. On another, she walked for five minutes every half hour. The results of this routine change were striking: her blood sugar was nearly cut in half, her blood pressure dropped by five points, and she reported substantially better concentration, energy, and mood. 

Researchers later tested a similar approach by enrolling nearly 20,000 people in a global study. On average, participants reported a 25% decrease in fatigue. 

This is heartening news: You can improve your mental and physical health with very short bouts of activity that don’t have to be intense to be effective. As Zomorodi said, “The point is to get the blood flowing and raise your heart rate just a little bit, but you don’t have to go crazy.”

Every 30 minutes, just get up and walk. Go outside or simply walk around your house. Jump on a treadmill if you have one. The movement needs to be continuous; just standing at a desk doesn’t carry the same benefits. 

Don’t want to walk? Move in place. Jumping jacks, push-ups, bodyweight squats, or any other simple movement can also work. And don’t obsess over hitting that exact 30-minute interval every time — while the greatest benefits accrue to those who move every half hour, there are significant benefits even for moving every 1-2 hours. The broader goal is to break up long stretches of sitting with a short bout of physical activity.

You Also Need to Move Around After Work 

It’s easy to think of sitting as a workday problem; you sit at your desk all day, so you need to get up occasionally. But what happens when work ends? For many people, you go home and sit on the couch for three or four hours.

You don’t have to give up your favorite show or turn leisure time into exercise. Between episodes or during commercial breaks, get up to walk around the house, take the dog outside, or do a few jumping jacks. The goal is to avoid turning an extended period of relaxation into a long chunk of uninterrupted sitting. 

Make It Automatic

Now, the hardest part isn’t necessarily the five-minute break — it’s remembering to take it. When you’re absorbed in work, it’s surprisingly easy to go from “I’ll get up in a minute” to realizing that two hours have passed. That’s why one of the most common strategies participants used in the study was setting a timer.

Set one for 30 or 60 minutes. When it goes off, drop what you’re doing, get up, and move for five minutes. You don’t have to interrupt a genuine flow state, but you do want to create a regular pattern of breaking up long periods of sitting.

You don’t have to be moving all day long to live with greater vim and vigor. Just five minutes here and there will have you feeling more vital. 

For even more info and actionable advice from Manoush Zomorodi, be sure to listen to the podcast: