The Real Importance of Planned Movement

Too many people misunderstand the purpose of planned movement.

Planned exercise and movement is too often used as a means to burn calories and lose weight. In reality, planned movement throughout your day (like working out for 30-45 minutes) makes up less than 10% of your daily movement.

Additionally, people greatly overestimate how many calories they are actually burning (thanks technology!) when doing planned exercise and greatly underestimate the amount of calories burned in the other 90+% of their day.

We burn calories doing things like standing, fidgeting, digesting, walking, etc.

Obsessing over how many calories you’re burning during a workout pushes people away from things that would greatly benefit them (like resistance training) and towards more of the things they think will burn the most calories (like endless cardio).

This is not to say you don’t need cardiovascular exercise; you absolutely do. It’s necessary for long term health, but so is resistance training! 

Let’s shift our focus to movement and exercise and what our bodies are capable of and what we want to be able to do instead of focusing on trying to burn more and more calories.

Your planned movement should be about getting stronger, more resilient, and doing things that lead to increased longevity.

Calories matter, but they’re not the only thing that matters!