Are you ready for B.A.L.L.S.!?

Now that I have your attention, let’s chat.  I love to move and I love exercise.  In a perfect world, we would all love to exercise, and we would all have an easy time fitting in a workout every day.  Well, it’s not a perfect world, and I realize everyone doesn’t feel the same way I do.  Everyone doesn’t like to exercise; everyone doesn’t have time to workout everyday.  Maybe that’s because we have placed too narrow a restriction on how we define ‘exercise.’  We tend to place a great deal of attention on doing specific ‘exercise programs,’ or working out a certain number of times per week, and getting to the gym no matter what obstacles are put in your way.  Those things are great, and ideally, that is what we should all strive for to achieve maximum health benefits.  But let’s face it, for a variety of reasons, those options are not available to everyone.  Sometimes exercise means doing whatever we can do, whenever we can do it.    So, with that in mind, I want you to focus on a challenge this week: B.A.L.L.S., Being A Little Less Sedentary.

Recent studies have shown that being sedentary for a smaller amount of time on a daily basis could be beneficial to your health.  Even if you are physically active on a regular basis, you still need to avoid being sedentary for an extended period of time.  So here are the specifics of my challenge:

• If you have a desk job, I want you to set an alarm to go off every hour at which time you will get up for at least 1 minute.  What you do during this minute is up to you, as long as you’re not sitting.  Even if you just stand at your desk during a telephone call, that still counts.

• If you are a couch potato at some point during the day (e.g. watching TV for longer than 1hour) I want you to stand up during commercials.  Even if you just stand by your couch, that still counts.

• If you are presented with the option of stairs or an elevator and you are only going up or down 1 or 2 flights, take the stairs.

• If you are going out to dinner or to the mall or running errands, park farther away from the entrance to your destination.  This is a common suggestion, but I want you to actually do it this time.

• If you go to a store and use a shopping cart to carry items to your car, walk the cart back to the front of the store after unloading your purchases, rather than leaving the cart in the space next to you.

Good luck with your B.A.L.L.S. this week and let me know how you do!  If you have any other, B.A.L.L.S. activity suggestions (family-friendly please), feel free to leave a comment below!