Couch potatoes rejoice: You can get fit without giving up your Netflix addiction. "Fitness snacking" is the new trend that proves that spending long hours sweating it out at the gym isn’t the only way to have the strong and healthy body you’ve always dreamt of.
The good news: is that you don’t need to be a gym rat to get in shape. The bad news is that, unfortunately, actual snacking isn’t part of the process. According to the Daily Mail, "fitness snacking" refers to smart exercise or short and intense workout sessions.
As London-based fitness authority Matt Roberts explains, fitness snacking is opting for short periods of exercise throughout the day, instead of doing it all in one go. The exercise can be literally any physical activity that you can manage during the day, from having a 10-minute run after work to simply walking the dog out. Every physical "task" that you undertake gives you points. Keeping a tally in your head of your daily tasks draws a clear picture of how many "points" you get during the day in regard to your fitness goals.
And judging by Matt Roberts’ A-list clientele, which includes supermodel Naomi Cambell and former British first lady Samantha Cameron, fitness snacking isn’t just a fad. It is a realistic and reasonable fitness plan, that, unlike an unused gym membership, costs you nothing.
Like other popular lifestyle trends, such as intermittent fasting, it’s more about a persistent ‘less is more’ attitude towards your goals. Forget the “no pain, no gain” mantra, and the “all or nothing” attitude. Just be kind to yourself, and do as much or as little as you can in your free time. It is important to realize that a brisk walk before lunch or a muscle stretch away from the screen is better than nothing at all.
What’s more, let’s not forget that a quarter of the Earth’s population is at risk of chronic disease due to sedentary lifestyles. Asking inactive people to regularly hit the gym is realistically-speaking too much.So if you hate the gym, or it gives you bad muscle pain, or you simply feel weird squeezing into those tiny polyester Adidas tights, just give fitness snacking a go. And if you do, please tell us what you think!
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