WHY YOU SHOULD THINK ABOUT MOVEMENT LIKE FOOD

When it comes to movement, we often think in terms of getting enough. But our needs for movement are nuanced.

What’s the difference between:

• a high-volume, nutrient-dense movement/a “well-balanced” movement diet,

• high-volume, low-diversity movement/”high-calorie, low-nutrient” movement, and

• low-volume, low-diversity movement/”low-calorie, nutrient-poor” movement?

  

  Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Movement works similarly to how food works in the body. The movement you put “in” to your body affects how its tissues and cells work, and you’re never just putting movement into your whole body—you’re putting movement into the specific parts that are doing the work.

Let’s think about food diets for a second. These days, most people are aware that the effects of their diet are not based simply on getting enough food. The ratio of carbohydrates, proteins, dietary fiber, fats, vitamins, and minerals matters tremendously. Even the timing of meals can factor into the way diet impacts the body’s function.

Just as we talk about our food diet in terms of calories, macronutrients, and micronutrients, we can—and should!—think of movement in the same way. When you move, no matter which parts are doing it, you’re generating “movement calories”—and the type of movement you’re doing (i.e., the activity and which parts are working) contains particular “movement nutrients.”

Eating a balanced food diet means we get our calories from the three macronutrient categories—fat, protein, and carbohydrate. Similarly, a balanced movement diet needs to include movements from a range of categories: endurance, strength, mobility, and balance. Instead of looking solely at how much, in steps or minutes, we move each day (think “movement calories”), we also need to make sure we’re using movement in a variety of ways and distributing that movement all over our body.

Movement is an essential input for the body, and across the board there’s agreement that we must move our bodies for health and longevity. But there are some issues in this simplicity.

Laborers move their bodies all day long, yet many leave their work due to injury and pain—or worse, must keep working despite the aches. All that movement isn’t making their bodies feel good. Athletes can train hard and be fantastically fit while they’re performing but end up not being able to move well later in life. Shouldn’t moving now help us move better in the future? And what about those who desire to move more but can’t because it hurts when they move? The simplistic directive to “Just move more!” doesn’t work for many people—it often requires elaboration.

I began using a “movement nutrient” framework sixteen years ago when looking for an efficient way to explain movement in the above variety of experiences and more. I even named my movement company Nutritious Movement because the calorie/macronutrient/micronutrient framework helps people understand the breadth of movement our bodies really need. It helps us understand which movements we aren’t getting enough of and which we might be getting too much of.

Thanks for reading. Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work..

In the most general sense, there are three broad classifications of food diets: those balanced in terms of calories and nutrients (the right amount of food containing the correct quantities of macro- and micronutrients); those high in calories but low in nutrients (you’re getting enough energy from the calories, but you’re still missing essential nutrients); and those too low in both calories and necessary nutrients. “Movement diets” work in the same way. If “movement calories” are the total units (minutes) of movement you’re getting and “movement nutrients” are the different shapes your body flows through to create that movement, which below sounds the closest to your movement diet?

High-volume, nutrient-dense movement/a “well-balanced” movement diet:

You move your body a large portion of the day in a way that nourishes all the different body parts and tissue-types, and also develops (or maintains) the movement skills necessary to live your life in a way you find meaningful.

High-volume, low-diversity movement/”high-calorie, low-nutrient” movement:

You move a lot every day—maybe your work or lifestyle involves a lot of physical labor. You might be on your feet all day and almost never sit down for hours at a time. But the way you move is repetitive and uses the same body parts or patterns over and over again, leaving some of your parts strong and other parts lacking. This might describe anyone from a nurse or mail carrier to a competitive cyclist or runner who practices a lot but doesn’t do much cross-training.

Low-volume, low-diversity movement/”low-calorie, nutrient-poor” movement:

Most of your time is spent sitting—at home, work, and most places in between. Even if you do get up to exercise every day for an hour, the rest of the time you’re back in the chair or couch. Because you don’t move your whole body much, most of your parts are also not regularly involved in movement. This describes many office workers and people who drive for a living, like bus drivers.

Share below which movement category you identify with!

Once you figure out which movement diet you currently have, that can guide you to approaching movement in a brand new way—a way that changes not only how you move, but also how you think about movement and where it “fits” into your life. Spoiler alert: it can fit into every part of your life, not just exercise time.

This article is a modified essay from my book on movement as nutrition, My Perfect Movement Plan. Read more why (and how) movement affects us both systematically and locally in Move Your DNA.