You know the feeling: that little voice in your head always reminding you that you should move more. Think about it: breakfast sitting down, the bus or the car sitting down, eight hours of work sitting down and, at the end, that episode of your show on the couch. You rushed from one commitment to the next all day and, even so, your body barely moved. That’s the most common face of a sedentary lifestyle today, and it has nothing to do with laziness.
A sedentary lifestyle means not reaching the amount of physical activity recommended for health, which for adults is at least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity (a week, don’t panic!). To break out of it, you don’t need a gym: walking, stairs, playing with your kids and even housework done at a brisker pace all count, as long as you build up gradually.
What is a sedentary lifestyle, in practice
The Physical Activity Guidelines for the Brazilian Population (in Portuguese), from Brazil’s Ministry of Health, in line with the World Health Organization, recommend that adults get at least 150 minutes a week of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, and that on at least two of those days they include exercises that strengthen muscles and bones. Anyone below that is considered physically inactive, which is what we call sedentary in everyday life.
The yardstick talks about minutes per week, not the gym: someone who walks to work and climbs a hill every day may be quite active without ever setting foot in a gym.
Being inactive and sedentary behavior are not the same thing
Here’s the thing: there’s a difference between being an inactive person and having sedentary behavior. The same guidelines define sedentary behavior as the time you spend awake sitting, reclining or lying down while using very little energy: on your phone, at the computer, watching TV, in the car or on the bus. In other words, there are two separate tallies, one for how much you move and another for how long you stay still. Make sense?
In practice, you can hit the 150 minutes and still spend ten hours a day sitting. The World Health Organization treats them as problems that add up, so the plan needs to tackle both.
Am I sedentary? A one-minute self-check
Lots of people search for “symptoms of a sedentary lifestyle”, but tiredness, poor sleep and shortness of breath can have a thousand causes and don’t add up to a diagnosis. It works better to look at your week with these questions:
- Adding up walking, cycling, stairs, dancing and sports, do you reach 150 minutes a week at a moderate pace?
- On at least two days a week, do you do something that takes strength, like carrying weight, squatting or pushing?
- When you sit for a long time, do you get up and move at least once an hour?
- Does climbing two flights of stairs or chasing your child to the gate leave you unable to talk for a good while?
If the answer is “no” to the first three, or “yes” to the last one, you’re very likely living a sedentary lifestyle, and that’s okay: with work and kids, it’s really common to end up in this group. The good news is that we can always change our habits and improve our quality of life. I’ll show you how below.
The risks: why it’s worth moving now
According to the WHO, physical inactivity is among the leading risk factors for death from chronic disease, and people who don’t move enough have a 20% to 30% higher risk of dying than those who are sufficiently active.
The risks pointed out by the WHO and the Brazilian guidelines show up throughout the body:
- Heart and circulation: a higher chance of high blood pressure and heart disease.
- Metabolism: a higher risk of type 2 diabetes and more difficulty managing weight.
- Cancer: regular physical activity is linked to a lower risk of some types, like breast and colon cancer.
- Mind: people who move have fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression, and sleep better.
- Children: lots of time sitting still is associated with more body fat, poorer fitness and fewer hours of sleep.
The good news is that the WHO stressed that every move counts: any activity, of any length, can improve your health. Nobody needs to jump straight from zero to 150 minutes.
How to tell if your pace is moderate: the talk test
Before I show you the plan, you need to know how intense your activity is, and the Brazilian guidelines offer a simple way to measure it without any watch. If you can talk normally and even sing, the activity is light. When your breathing speeds up, you can talk with some effort and singing is out of the question, you’re at a moderate pace. And if you can’t even talk, it’s vigorous. The plan’s target is moderate: that walk where you can still reply to the school group chat, just a bit out of breath.
How to stop being sedentary without a gym: a 4-week plan
The Brazilian guidelines are very clear: if you’re not reaching the recommendation yet, don’t give up, and gradually increase the amount and intensity. The plan below follows that logic. All walking time is at a moderate pace, the one from the talk test.
| Week | Movement | Strength | Weekly total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10 minutes of walking on 3 days, plus a 5-minute break for every hour of sitting | Not yet | 30 minutes |
| 2 | 15 minutes of walking on 5 days | Not yet | 75 minutes |
| 3 | 20 minutes of walking or cleaning the house on 4 days, and strength on 1 day | 1 day | 100 minutes |
| 4 | 30 minutes of walking or cleaning the house on 3 days, and strength on 2 days | 2 days | 150 minutes |
The week 1 break comes straight from the guidelines, which suggest moving for at least 5 minutes for every hour spent still (get up, refill your water bottle, stretch), and it continues in the following weeks.
Cleaning the house counts as movement too, which is why I put it in the table. But there’s a catch: you have to do it at a brisk pace for it to count. No humming along and stopping to check your phone. And if a week felt too hard, repeat it before moving on, since the plan has no deadline.
Where the minutes fit into your routine
The guidelines point out that physical activity happens in four areas of life: free time, getting around, work or study, and household chores. That way the minutes show up where you already are:
- Getting around: get off the bus one stop early, walk the kids to school when it’s close by, or park at the far end of the grocery store lot.
- Work: take calls standing and walking, use the stairs instead of the elevator for one or two floors, and walk over to a coworker’s desk instead of sending a message.
- Home: sweep, mop and carry the groceries at a brisker pace, as long as it leaves you a little out of breath. Two birds with one stone.
- Free time: a walk after dinner or lunch (it even helps digestion), a bike ride in the park on Sunday, or dancing in the living room with the kids.
If you look closely, these are things you can easily fit into your routine. Once again, I invite you to read the 30-minute routine to keep the house organized and clean with kids to use that daily time strategically.
Strength without a gym, using your body weight
The guidelines accept exercises using your own body weight, done in the living room. A simple routine to get started:
- Sit-to-stand from a chair, without using your hands, 10 to 12 times. It’s an easy way to start squatting, because the chair catches you.
- Wall push-ups: hands on the wall, take a step back, and bend your elbows bringing your chest toward it. 10 to 12 reps.
- Step-ups on one stair, alternating legs, holding on to the handrail.
- Glute bridge: lying on your back with knees bent, lift your hips and lower them slowly. Keep the same number of reps, 10 to 12.
Do two or three rounds, resting in between, and when it gets easy, move from wall push-ups to push-ups with your hands on the couch and, later on, on the floor.
With kids and little time: how to adapt the plan
When the kids won’t let you go out for a walk, the most practical thing is to stop separating your movement from theirs: if your child rides a bike and you walk alongside, or if dancing in the living room becomes a late-afternoon game, everyone moves together.
It’s worth looking at their sitting time too, because a household usually shares the same habits. The Brazilian guidelines recommend no screen time for babies up to 1 year old (that’s zero screens), a maximum of 1 hour a day for children aged 1 to 5 and, whenever possible, a maximum of 2 hours a day for children and teens aged 6 to 17. Swapping part of that time for a game of tag helps the kids and, as a bonus, gets you off the couch.
The secret is to include your kids. They tend to copy their parents while they exercise. And if you have a baby who always wants to be held as soon as you start exercising, pick them up and adapt the exercise of the moment. Squats with the baby already count as added weight.
And if you’re so tired you can’t even picture getting up, look at your sleep first, because it’s hard to move during the day when the night isn’t restful; the sleep hygiene habits for the whole family can help with that.
How to keep the habit after week four
What keeps the habit going is not relying on willpower, so I’d tie your walk to something that already happens every day, like right after dropping the kids off at school or right after dinner, with your sneakers by the door.
It also helps to write down your minutes on a sheet on the fridge, because seeing the week add up is motivating. And when a day goes wrong, don’t try to make up for it by doubling the next day: just go back to your normal pace. Movement fits really well with the other self-care habits for busy people, since taking care of your body is one of the most concrete ways to take care of yourself.
When to get advice before you start
Some situations call for a talk with your doctor before increasing intensity: heart disease, uncontrolled high blood pressure or diabetes, chest pain or unusual shortness of breath during exertion, dizziness, joint pain that gets worse with movement, and pregnancy. For pregnant women without contraindications, the guidelines also recommend 150 minutes a week, and prenatal appointments are the place to agree on what to do.
If you’d like free guidance and you live in Brazil, the guidelines mention SUS’s Academia da Saúde program (in Portuguese), and your nearest primary care clinic (UBS) can tell you whether your neighborhood has one. Elsewhere, it’s worth asking your doctor or local health center about free community activity programs.
Still have questions?
Is a sedentary lifestyle a disease?
It’s not a disease: it’s a behavior that increases the risk of several diseases. That’s why there’s no medicine for it: the “treatment” is moving more and sitting less.
Can thin people be sedentary?
Yes, and it’s very common. It’s measured by minutes of activity and time spent sitting, not by weight, so a thin person who doesn’t exercise is also exposed to the risks of inactivity.
Is walking every day enough to stop being sedentary?
A 30-minute moderate walk on five days already covers the aerobic part of the recommendation. To complete it, you still need the two days of strength training and the breaks to cut up your sitting time.
To wrap up
A sedentary lifestyle means getting less than 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, and spending the day sitting is a separate problem. To break out of it without a gym, increase your minutes gradually, use your home, your commute and your kids to your advantage, and get up every hour.
Sources: CDC: Adult Activity: An Overview.
Informational content. It does not replace advice from a health professional, such as a doctor or a certified fitness professional.
