How we can exercise more without even trying
Getty ImagesIncidental activity can reduce our risk of cardiovascular disease and even death. You can try some simple forms of it in a meeting, on a flight or while reading this article.
It can be easy to spend an entire day sitting. First at your desk at work, then perhaps in your car, followed by a couple of hours on the sofa. Before you know it, you're having dinner and realise you haven't exercised all day.
Many global studies have found that a sedentary lifestyle can increase the risk of serious health conditions. Everything we can do to decrease sedentary time therefore benefits our overall health. But it can be challenging to find the time.
That's where incidental exercise comes in. This is the moving around we do outside of deliberate exercise. It's also known as "non-exercise activity thermogenesis", or NEAT. This refers to any energy we use for movement that isn't sleeping, eating or deliberate exercise, says Anantha Narayanan, a research fellow at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand.
Incidental exercise can be as simple as tapping your leg when you are sitting down or doing the washing up. "Smaller movements like shifting posture, rolling the shoulders or flexing the feet count too," says Narayanan.
Incidental exercise is emerging as a surprisingly powerful tool for protecting our health, helping us to burn more calories, reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, and even lower our risk of death.
Once we're aware of this "incidental activity", we can build more of it into our everyday routine with a few simple lifestyle tweaks. Here are some you might want to try.
Fidgeting
Take, for instance, leg fidgeting.
Growing up, we're encouraged not to fidget, which is seen as a sign of boredom and not paying attention. There are many reasons to ignore this advice.
During prolonged periods of sitting, muscles in our legs are relatively inactive. This reduces the regular muscle contractions that help to clear glucose from the bloodstream and support healthy blood circulation, says Narayanan.
But fidgeting increases muscle activity and therefore helps us to burn more calories compared with when we are sitting still, a recent study has found.
"Some earlier research suggests that leg fidgeting may help maintain blood vessel function and improve blood sugar control," says Narayanan. Standing as you do this may enhance these benefits. (Read more from the BBC about when you do and don't need to worry about blood sugar spikes.)
Similarly, a small study found that habitual leg shaking, a form of fidgeting, burns about 16% more energy compared with sitting still.
Getty ImagesMove often
Unlike structured activity, incidental movement does not require a gym membership or for us to carve out specific time to move.
We often forget that everyday household activities can decrease sedentary time. Cooking, gardening and vacuuming are also forms of incidental exercise.
We don't need to spend hours moving to gain health benefits. Just four minutes per day of brief, incidental bursts of activity that last less than a minute can help to offset the increased risk of cardiovascular diseases from sedentary time, a large 2024 study found.
In the study, researchers analysed data from over 22,000 UK participants wearing a tracking device which captured how much they moved throughout the day. The sample was limited to individuals who did not regularly take part in purposeful exercise.
The participants were followed for eight years. The researchers found that higher levels of incidental activity could offset the health risks associated with sitting for more than 11 hours a day. Follow-up research has found that incidental activity is also linked to a lower risk of premature death.
Nicholas Koemel, senior research fellow at Monash University in Australia, who led the research, says the type of activities we could include are climbing flights of stairs, carrying heavy shopping bags or playing with children.
By paying attention to opportunities that help us increase our movement throughout the day, people may be able to increase the intensity of these activities, says Koemel.
This could include walking faster than your normal pace to get to your destination or parking further away when going to the shops. While you're there, consider using a basket instead of a trolley. Before you realise it, you may well have strengthened your muscles by carrying a few kilos of shopping around.
Habit piggybacking
Large fitness goals can feel overwhelming, so another strategy to introduce movement throughout the day could involve "piggybacking" on activities you are already doing, says Amanda Daley, professor of behavioural medicine at Loughborough University in the UK.
This simply involves adding some movement to an activity you are already doing. You could try doing a calf raise while brushing your teeth, a leg raise under your desk, or going for a walk while on a call instead of sitting down.
Daley says that in her household there's a rule that any packages ordered online must be delivered to a nearby locker instead of to her house. "If we want something we have to pick it up. This can also be a great way to get teenagers out of their rooms to get some walking into their day."
We can build new habits into the working day too. In one study, Daley and colleagues provided doctors with standing desks. This helped them reduce the time they would otherwise have been sitting by about two hours per day. This also encouraged more conversations with their patients about the benefits of reducing sedentary time, the team found.
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"Incidental activity can also be a time-efficient way to be physically active because you don't always need to put a lot of time aside." says Daley. "It's important to find approaches that are less daunting and feel more manageable to achieve."
Best of all, the more incidental activity you do throughout the day, the more purposeful it can become over time. This could be motivating, says Koemel. "When something becomes ingrained in your lifestyle, incidentally, it has inherently become your lifestyle."
With that in mind, I'm going to start unashamedly tapping my legs during meetings. I might get some funny looks, but I'll know that I'm benefitting my health.
* Melissa Hogenboom is a senior health correspondent at the BBC. She is melissa_hogenboom on Instagram.
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