24-hour Movement Guidelines for people ages 18-64: An integration of physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep.
As an exercise physiologist who practices in the field of chronic disease management, I often have conversations with patients about increasing daily physical activity. Although beneficial overall, and depending on the individual, simply adding some physical activity to their day is not enough to truly produce the ideal level of heathy change for that person. These guidelines created by the Canadian Society of Exercise Physiology (CSEP) are now available to help provide specifics to answer that question for patients.
The guidelines themselves can be broken down to a few
specific categories to ensure a “healthy 24 hours”. These include physical
activity, sleep, and sedentary behaviours, or time spend inactive or sitting.
Physical Activity
Beginning with physical activity, the recommendations
continue to include 150
minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic physical activity added up throughout
your week as well as muscle strengthening exercises for your major muscle
groups two times per week. It is important to keep in mind these
recommendations are for an individual that does not have any medical conditions
or disabilities that would prevent their ability to reach these activities
levels. If an individual is not able to reach these guidelines from a medical standpoint,
they should consult with their health care team to determine appropriate levels
of physical activity. This also includes several ours of light physical
activity such as standing, which I will speak more on later.
Sleep
The 24-hour Movement Guidelines recommends 7-9 hours
of sleep, which includes regular wake and sleep cycles. This continues to
follow the current guidelines and remains the gold standard for sleep goals.
Sedentary Behaviour
This is the time spent being inactive such as sitting at a
desk, watching TV or sitting in front of a screen. CSEP currently recommends
limiting sedentary behaviour to 8 hours or less per day with goals of less than
3 hours of screen time a day, and breaking up long periods of sedentary
positions as much as possible; I always tell my patients to try not to sit for
more than an hour at a time.
It is important to discuss how people can implement
these guidelines and why the recommendations are what they are. Sleep is
self explanatory, but I believe these guidelines truly shine when reviewing the
recommendations for physical activity and sedentary behaviour.
The get the biggest benefit from the guidelines, people
should try and create a goal of turning more sedentary time into beneficial light
activities such as standing, walking, moving, and progressing times you may be
performing these light activities into more moderate of vigorous activities.
Progressing these activities in your day increases the amount of time you spend
moving each day, the calories that you burn, and helps your body adapt to being
more
physically active. When progressing sedentary time to light activity times such
as standing, it helps increase what is called NEAT which stands for
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, NEAT is defined as the energy spent for everything we do that is not
sleeping, eating or sports-like exercise. It ranges from the energy spent walking
to work, typing on a computer, performing yard work, doing yard work or
gardening, and even fidgeting. The more you can move outside of
planned times for physical activity, the higher your NEAT and the more calories
you will burn and the greater, overall likelihood of positive health outcomes.
It is important to realize these are 24-hour movement guidelines and not physical activity guidelines. These new guidelines help to promote a greater range of activities per day, while emphasizing sleep and reducing sedentary behaviour and continuing to support the previous physical activity guidelines as provided by CSEP.
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