Move. It’s something we do every day. It’s also something we do less and less of with each generation. We are constantly finding new ways of making our life more convenient and help save time. All at the cost of moving our bodies less.

Convenience leads to less movement

Take for instance the drive-in restaurant that eventually became the drive-thru and now has evolved to the straight-to-your-door delivery option. There is no more need to walk to your car, walk to the restaurant, walk back to your car, and walk back to your home.  

Now you can walk to your door and have your food waiting for you right there. I mean how convenient is that? The only thing better now would be someone to walk into our house and serve us. 

However, convenience comes with an unfortunate downside, one that may be more detrimental to our overall health than we like to admit. It makes us move less and that is not good. 

Many people are now working from home, movies are now streaming right on our TV, thermostats are operated by our phone, camera doorbells let us see who’s there without leaving the couch, robotic vacuums and mops are cleaning our homes, robotic lawn mowers are cutting our grass, dishwashers are cleaning our dishes and the list just keeps growing with each passing year. 

If you take a second to think about doing each listed activity ourselves, that would all add up to a lot of movement! 

I have to admit all of the activities listed are huge timesavers, intended to allow us more time to do more important things in our lives. But what are we really doing with our saved time?

Unfortunately, that’s where convenience goes wrong for many people. What was intended to allow us more time to do other activities has instead allowed us to lounge around more frequently. 

Humans are made to move

As humans, we are made to move every day and rest occasionally. Just think of a time you sat for too long and tried to get up. Your knees are a little stiff at first, leg muscles a little tight, and lower back just a bit achy. 

As you start to move around, all three of those issues fade away and stay away until the next time you sit for too long. The same thing happens if we stand still or lie down for too long as well. 

Moving lubricates our joints and keeps muscles loose and supple. When we stay still for too long in one position, muscles become shortened and tight while others get overstretched and weak. Over time this leads to muscle imbalances that result in other aches and pains. 

We eat to move

Our bodies are designed to effectively store energy for later use in the form of fat. As we evolved this allowed us more time to do other things such as making tools and building a shelter.

Imagine if we had to eat all day like a horse or cow to get enough energy throughout the day just to allow us to eat again tomorrow. We would’ve never had time to invent the wheel let alone fly to space!

But our evolutionary advantage of storing calories from a meal for later use has not evolved fast enough to keep up with our inventions of convenience. 

Removing all the little mundane tasks we found to be time consuming also added up to a lot of calories at the end of the day. By removing these tasks we effectively decrease our energy output.

Unfortunately our appetite doesn’t decrease with an energy output decrease and, even worse, sometimes can increase through eating out of boredom or need to stimulate our feel good receptors in our brain. Something that is stimulated with movement as well and with a longer lasting effect.

How to move more in a world of convenience

You don’t have to move a lot, in fact, too much movement such as running a marathon will cause the same problems. Instead, you have to move frequently in small amounts throughout the day. 

Step trackers are great tools to help you increase your daily movement. They even remind you to move if you’ve been still for too long. Using one is a great way to ensure you are maintaining or even improving your daily movement.   

Ways to increase movement in small and frequent amounts.

• Go for a 10-15 min walk on your lunch break

• Park further away from the store

• Push back the cart to the store not just the cart corral

• Walk to the mailbox after parking your car 

• Take the stairs instead of the elevator

• Walk into the restaurant instead of the drive-thru

• Go to the store instead of shopping online

You most likely started to think of your own ideas while reading this list, write them down and start to incorporate them into every day. 

You’ll find that as you move more in small amounts each day you actually start to increase your energy, feel better, and look forward to moving in new and fun ways.

Take advantage of all these modern conveniences we have created to explore new activities that bring joy and fun to your life. Going for hikes, kayaking, bike rides, swimming, bird watching, picking wild mushrooms, taking care of your garden, etc. 

The best part is that if you ever get bored with one activity, you get to explore and find a new activity. Seeing as there are boundless activities available, you’ll never be bored again. 

And now all of the modern conveniences start to make more sense. They help us live a more fulfilling and healthy life instead of allowing us more time to do nothing and only impede our health.

Written by: Adam Skowyra MPPD, RDN, LD