What is the difference between exercise and movement and what is more important for weight loss? Exercise and movement are both distinct pillars in the Target100 program, focusing all aspects of our environment make it the best program to lose weight.
Let's talk exercise first. Exercise is important for health, longevity, wellbeing and happiness but is not a huge driver for weight loss. Exercise is specific, planned, and purposeful physical activity. It is activity that elevates your heart rate and stresses the muscles (stress is a good thing for muscles in this sense!). Doing more exercise will help your body build and retain muscle but don’t expect to out exercise what you eat. Instead, exercise is about training your brain to be tough, push through discomfort, and build resilience.
Movement on the other hand is all the incidental activity that we do throughout the day – household chores, gardening, walking to and from work or school, or climbing stairs. It is the act of moving our body each day, something we tend to do less and less of over the past several years. We also tend to slow down and move less as we age, which makes it even more important to focus on intentional movement daily to achieve weight loss and maintain weight with age.
Simply exercising and “clocking in” your 30-minute workout each day is not enough to achieve and sustain weight loss. Your body needs to move more throughout the day to keep the metabolism up, your muscles working and blood flowing.
"Over 10,000 studies conclude that prolonged sitting will reduce your life span and promote disease, even if you exercise regularly. (This is reason enough to separate exercise and movement, in my opinion!)" ~ Liz Josefsberg, founder, CEO, and author of Target100
The goal of moving more each day is to sit less. Simply sitting for most of our busy day leaves us at increased risk of head and neck pain from staring at screens, digestive issues, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. In the Target100 weight loss program we use steps as a metric for tracking movement daily. The act of moving more each day, in addition to hitting the targets in the other pillars, will help you lose weight.
Here are 5 ways to increase your movement daily as part of a healthy habits to support weight loss.
- Do calls while standing and walking
- Get a standing desk
- Use wearable device for tracking steps (if join the Target100 Beginner Course you’ll receive a fitness tracker in your Target100 box). Tracking increases awareness which can drive action.
- Stand during commercial breaks
- Go for a walk after dinner for 10 to 15 minutes
Find more ideas to boost your daily step count and hit your movement goal to support weight loss here.