AMANDA STERCZYK - AUTHOR
  • About
    • Meet Amanda
    • Amanda's Fitness Credentials
    • Workshops
    • Testimonials
    • Events
  • Books
    • Chair Exercises for Fall Prevention
    • Audiobook: Balance Exercises for Fall Prevention
    • Balance Exercises for Fall Prevention
    • Balance 2.0
    • Balance and Your Body
    • Ejercicios de Equilibrio para Prevenir Caídas
    • Pace Yourself: Exercising After COVID-19
    • Sweat-Free Exercises for the Office
    • Move More, Your Life Depends On It
    • Your Job is Killing You
    • I Can See Your Underwear
    • Selfried and the Secrets
    • Bulk Orders
  • The Move More Institute™
    • 3 Days to Better Balance
    • Balance 2.0
    • Get Off Your Butt!
    • Add Movement at Work
    • Move More! Coaching for Behaviour Change
    • Move More with Amanda
    • Free Videos
  • Blog
  • Media
    • Print
    • Video
    • Audio
  • Contact

BLog

Introducing The Move More Institute™

8/21/2017

0 Comments

 
The Good Old Days?
Remember the carefree summer days of your childhood? You’d jump out of bed with enthusiasm, ready for whatever adventure presented itself. The world was full of possibility and so were you. You didn’t think twice about hopping on your bike to race to your best friend’s house. When you arrived, you’d kick off your shoes and run through the sprinkler until you were too hungry to continue. After a quick lunch, it was time to head to the park, usually until you were called home for dinner.

You didn’t have to think about your posture, proper knee alignment when bending your legs, shoes to support your weak arches, or range of motion in your joints. You just did what came naturally to you - you moved. A lot.


What About Now?
How’s your body feeling these days? Do you still jump out of bed and run around in your bare feet? Likely not - as most adults report some form of muscular and/or joint pain. When you stand up, how long does it take you to go from sitting to standing? Do you feel stiffness in certain joints as you get up? Your joints are seizing up from lack of lubrication - aka lack of movement. When you’re stiff, you move more slowly. And when you don’t have a spring in your step, you look and act ‘old’.
You don’t have to be old to move in a slower, stiff way. You just have to be inactive - i.e., mostly sedentary. Lack of physical movement is prematurely aging our society.
Picture
Are you a Sedentary Sam?
Picture
Are you a Fidget Finn?
Mostly Sedentary or Mostly Fidgeter?
Are YOU a Sedentary Sam or a Fidget Finn? The technical terms are “prolonger” and “breaker”. [1]
    prolonger: Someone who accumulates sedentary time in extended continuous bouts,
    breaker: Someone who accumulates sedentary time with frequent interruptions and in short bouts.

Those terms come to us from the Sedentary Behaviour Research Network. Think about that for a moment: our society has become so sedentary that researchers have had time to convene a worldwide research network to study us. I used to work in research and let me tell you, nothing happens fast. This problem has been years in the making. We’ve become a society of leisure-based, labour-saving technological slugs, and it’s killing us. Metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity are all on the rise.[2] A recent documentary entitled “Cholesterol: The Great Bluff” tackled the topic: in it, cardiologist Dr. Mikael Rabaeus proclaims, “Yet again, it’s a sedentary lifestyle that’s the killer.”[3]
How did this lifestyle change - this life of leisure - entrap us in bodies that are now failing us? It was a gradual process over the twentieth century and into our current times. The industrial revolution, followed by the current technological revolution, have given us many labour-saving devices. From dishwashers and garage door openers smartphones and online shopping, researchers have tracked an increase in obesity that correlates directly with an increase in the acquisition of labour-saving devices. [4]
The Move More Institute™: A N.E.A.T. Solution 
But it’s not too late to turn back the clock on your failing body. That’s why I created The Move More Institute™. It’s an initiative to promote healthy active living by adding more movement to individuals' daily lives. And it will help - it’s a N.E.A.T. solution! N.E.A.T. refers to Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis - the way our bodies expend energy that is not eating, sleeping, or your scheduled workout. [4, 5]
NEAT is different that your workout at the gym: “NEAT corresponds to all the energy expended with occupation, leisure time activity, sitting, standing, ambulation, toe-tapping, shovelling snow, playing the guitar, dancing, singing, washing, etc.” [5] Even if you do a daily one-hour workout, you still need to keep your body moving in other ways throughout the day. If not, you’re what’s referred to as an “active couch potato”. [2]
The Move More Institute™ nudges people to be more active throughout the day. Natural, non-exercise activity spread across your day. Every day.  I'm a fitness professional with a radical idea - don't exercise! Just move more!
Move More!
What can you do to keep yourself independent and living your life actively and without pain? Move your body. Add snacks of movement to your day:


  • Rearrange your desk so you have to stand up and walk a little to reach your printer,
  • Put your water bottle on a high shelf so you stretch to reach it, 
  • Be less “efficient” at home - forget something upstairs so you climb the stairs again,
  • Stressed out waiting for the elevator? Take the stairs. Don’t tell me it’s too many flights - start with a few flights and when you’re pooped, get on the elevator for the rest of the trip.
If you move more, you will feel better. Guaranteed.
References
1. Sedentary Behavior Research Network (SBRN) – Terminology Consensus Project process and outcome, Mark S. Tremblay, Salomé Aubert, Joel D. Barnes, Travis J. Saunders, Valerie Carson, Amy E. Latimer-Cheung, Sebastien F.M. Chastin, Teatske M. Altenburg, Mai J.M. Chinapaw and on behalf of SBRN Terminology Consensus Project Participants, International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 2017,14:75; https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-017-0525-8
2. Too Much Sitting and Metabolic Risk—Has Modern Technology Caught Up with Us?
David W Dunstan, Genevieve N Healy, Takemi Sugiyama, Neville Owen
European Endocrinology, 2010; 6:19-23; DOI: http://doi.org/10.17925/EE.2010.06.00.19
3. Cholesterol: The Great Bluff, 2017; http://tvo.org/video/documentaries/cholesterol-the-great-bluff
4. Levine, J.A. Nonexercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT): environment and biology, American Journal of Physiology, Endocrinology & Metabolism. 10. 1152/ ajpendo. 00562. 2003 AJP - Endo May 1, 2004 vol. 286 no. 5 E675-E685
http://m.ajpendo.physiology.org/content/286/5/E675.full#F3
5. The Role of Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis in Human Obesity, Christian von Loeffelholz, 2004, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279077/
(endotext.org)
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    Essentrics
    Fitness
    General
    Guest Post
    Health & Wellness
    The Move More Institute™
    Writer

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    March 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    February 2021
    October 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014

    Author

    Amanda Sterczyk is an international author,  Certified Personal Trainer (ACSM), an Exercise is Medicine Canada (EIMC) Fitness Professional, and a Certified Essentrics® Instructor. 

    As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

    RSS Feed

Land Acknowledgement

I live and work on the traditional and unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe territory. Algonquin people have lived in the Ottawa Valley for at least 8,000 years before the Europeans arrived in North America, and are the customary keepers and defenders of the Ottawa River Watershed and its tributaries. From coast to coast to coast, I acknowledge the ancestral and unceded territory of all the Inuit, Métis, and First Nations people who call this land home. 

Company

About
Meet Amanda
Contact
Privacy Policy
​The advice and recommendations provided by Amanda Sterczyk - Author are not medical guidelines but are for educational purposes only. You must consult your physician prior to starting any exercise program.
 
​©2022 Amanda Sterczyk

​As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
  • About
    • Meet Amanda
    • Amanda's Fitness Credentials
    • Workshops
    • Testimonials
    • Events
  • Books
    • Chair Exercises for Fall Prevention
    • Audiobook: Balance Exercises for Fall Prevention
    • Balance Exercises for Fall Prevention
    • Balance 2.0
    • Balance and Your Body
    • Ejercicios de Equilibrio para Prevenir Caídas
    • Pace Yourself: Exercising After COVID-19
    • Sweat-Free Exercises for the Office
    • Move More, Your Life Depends On It
    • Your Job is Killing You
    • I Can See Your Underwear
    • Selfried and the Secrets
    • Bulk Orders
  • The Move More Institute™
    • 3 Days to Better Balance
    • Balance 2.0
    • Get Off Your Butt!
    • Add Movement at Work
    • Move More! Coaching for Behaviour Change
    • Move More with Amanda
    • Free Videos
  • Blog
  • Media
    • Print
    • Video
    • Audio
  • Contact