Small Consistent Efforts Over Time Make a Difference!

Photo by THIS IS ZUN: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-wearing-red-dress-on-gray-stairs-1057103/

Do you engage in VILPA?

Do you pause periodically throughout your day for exercise snacks?

If you’re not completely lost at this point, you obviously don’t waste nearly as much time as I do watching health and fitness videos on Youtube!

Although the terms “VILPA” and “exercise snacks” are pretty new, the concepts with those names have been around for quite a while. It’s just that in recent years some researchers have actually investigated whether or not they have any actual health benefits.

Since it turns out that they do, it was only a matter of time before health and fitness influencers came up with fancy names for them that you’ll only learn by being one of the cool kids who watch their videos.

VILPA stands for Vigorous Intensity Lifestyle Physical Activity.

That just clears it right up, doesn’t it?

VILPA just means that you make modifications in your regular daily activities to increase the physical exertion involved in doing them. If you ever heard someone suggest something like taking the stairs rather than the elevator to improve your health, that’s VILPA before someone gave it a name.

Other examples of VILPA would be things like parking further out in parking lots than necessary, or using a hand basket (and loading it up to make it relatively heavy) to collect your groceries rather than using a wheeled cart at the grocery store. VILPA can be a modification that increases the intensity and/or duration of whatever activity so that your body has to work harder.

The term VILPA only applies to changing a regular activity of daily living to make it more physically demanding.

Research has shown that just 3 minutes of VILPA every day can have significant health benefits – for both people who exercise regularly and those who don’t.

Similarly, exercise snacks seem to have some good benefits in overall health and fitness too.

Unlike VILPA, which involves activities that aren’t really intentional exercise, exercise snacks are short durations of activities that most people would think of as planned exercise – walking, using some kind of fitness machine, lifting weights, doing pushups, etc..

There’s a popular saying in the health and fitness field that “sitting is the new smoking.” As I’ve discussed in detail elsewhere, that’s not really true. Smoking is still a lot worse for you overall than sitting, but prolonged sitting definitely has adverse effects.

Exercise snacks – mini workouts of 1 to 10 minutes in duration - are a good remedy for the negative effects of sitting. They get you moving, improve your circulation, and typically boost your mental focus and generally make you feel better.

As with VILPA, exercise snacks have shown significant benefits for those who regularly do more in-depth exercise programs as well as for those who are more sedentary. I think they’re both worth adding into your daily routine.

If only they had better names!

Until next time…

George F. Best, D.C.