Need a quick energy boost? Skip the potato chips and climb the stairs instead. Exercise snacks – or short bursts of activity – can benefit your health and fitness.

According to the National Council on Aging, exercise snacks involve short bursts of activity based on familiar, everyday movements – repeated or intensified. Examples include getting up from a chair five times instead of once, taking the stairs faster, walking at a quick pace to get your mail or dancing in your living room during a TV commercial.

There aren’t any specific guidelines for how long an exercise snack should take, although anything longer than 10 minutes may be more of an exercise “meal.” There’s also not a prescribed degree of intensity.

Exercise snacks help you get closer to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) activity guidelines for adults: 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity (or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity) plus two days of muscle-strengthening activity each week. Older adults aged 65+ need additional activities to improve balance.

Getting activity in smaller doses can be beneficial even if you don’t hit the CDC targets. A study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of physically inactive but healthy adults and older adults found that exercise snacks improved muscular endurance for older adults. For adults, it improved cardiorespiratory fitness – a measure of the body’s ability to supply oxygen-rich blood to the muscles during physical activity.

The key to effectiveness for exercise snacks is to do them consistently over time. The study defined snacks as lasting five minutes or less, performed at least twice daily for a minimum of three times per week, for a period of two weeks or longer.

While more studies need to be done, a little activity, especially something you can easily fit into your day, is better than none. So, take a bite of this trend and see if it suits your palate. Who knows? It may whet your appetite to add even more activity to your plate.

Sources:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Council on Aging
National Institutes of Health