How a Five Minute Walk at Work Can Recharge and Improve Your Happiness

Staying healthy while working full time can feel like a real challenge for people who find themselves sitting at a desk all day. A quick run to the gym rarely seems to fit into our already overloaded schedules. But surprisingly enough, you don’t need to spend an hour doing cross-fit to make a big improvement in your health and happiness. Here’s how a simple 5-minute walk can do you a world of good.

Inexpensive but Effective

Five-minute walk breaks are an inexpensive way to promote workplace health and wellness, especially for small companies that lack the resources to offer comprehensive wellness programs. They’re quick, easy to do almost wherever you work, and they do just enough to boost your mood. Employers are able to get behind something so simple and inexpensive because they know there’s really no downside.

Flexible and Scalable

Employers can encourage workers whose jobs require sitting for long hours to take short walk breaks during the day. Researchers in the study found that breaking up sitting with any type of physical activity, such as standing up, moving around or walking up and downstairs, has health benefits. Hourly workers with scheduled break periods might not want to spend the time exercising or feel comfortable taking mini-breaks at other times. But employers can still encourage and allow them to take short walk breaks throughout the day. You can even build these little breaks into your daily run of business, by taking some “walking meeting” where you can walk and talk without breaking your stride.

Break Up Stagnation

The study, which also found that frequent, brief walking breaks were more effective at improving well-being than a single, longer walk before work, could provide the basis for a simple, realistic New Year’s exercise resolution for those of us bound to our desks all day. There is growing evidence, of course, that long bouts of uninterrupted sitting can have undesirable physical and emotional consequences. Studies have shown that sitting motionless reduces blood flow to the legs, increasing the risk for atherosclerosis, the buildup of plaques in the arteries. Getting up and walking around frequently throughout the day helps break that trend and directly improve health, wellness, and of course happiness.

A Simple Solution

In response to growing concerns around the risks associated with sitting for long periods of motionless time, some companies have proposed a variety of methods for helping people reduce their sitting time at work, including standing workstations and treadmill desks. But such options are often impractical, cumbersome and costly, making them not realistic for many work situations. That’s where the 5-minute walk meets the need. You can get up and go, wherever you are and feel better about your day.

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