Many of her suggestions are small and simple, though they were radical to me at first. Slip your shoes off at your desk and stretch your toes. Stand while working instead of sitting. Sit on the floor once or twice a day. Take five-minute walking breaks. Park farther away and walk to your destination.
The US Department of Health and Human Services recommends a minimum 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise each week to help avoid diabetes, arthritis, and heart disease. Regular exercisers get an average of 300 minutes per week. But a hunter-gatherer moved 3,000 minutes a week, Bowman writes in Move Your DNA.
Bowman wants 10,000 steps to be the baseline, not the goal. She likens exercise to eating something healthy so you can have dessert, but a kale salad doesn’t negate multiple crème brûlées. “We can do better than exercise. We need to do more than exercise,” she writes.
For the first time, my usual one to two hours a day doing yoga or Olympic weightlifting or that week’s class for the column felt like underachieving. I took a closer look at the ways I could move more frequently.
I didn’t get rid of the couch, but I did build other approaches into my life. I started sitting on the floor to work. I rolled out stiff feet and tight glutes while watching television. Fitting in 10,000 steps a day became a daily minimum. To rest my eyes, I looked into the distance whenever I was outside. I’ve done 20-mile walks with Bowman, who, in addition to being as smart as a whip, is a lively and warm human.
This approach also helps me from getting stuck in the idea I have to “exercise” every day. It’s helped me see that when I am sluggish or mentally stuck, all I need is a short walk to invigorate me. If I don’t have time for a class, I have other ways to move that are quick and that I can do nearby or at home. Movement has always been a way I connect back to myself, and doing it more throughout the day keeps me steady and anchored.
But my happiest days, my favorite days, still include a fitness class. I go to Olympic weightlifting sessions, I take a dance class, or I do yoga because they make me feel strong, energized, myself. The deeper shift showed up in the gaps in between, where my new normal and habits changed to walking, to sitting on the floor, to wearing minimal shoes.
Nowadays, I aim to move my body, all day, every day.
WHAT ELSE CHANGED?
For the next two years, I continued taking classes for my Fit for Life column while also working general movement into my life throughout my day, every day. And then, six years after it started, my weekly column ended. A look back at the final class count astonished me—I had tried roughly 300 classes. As I reflected on what I’d learned, I realized how much I had changed in those six years, and especially the final two.
When the column started, I had never tried high-intensity workouts. I didn’t know hauling myself up 150-foot trees using climbing gear was possible. I didn’t know how much I loved to dance. My original goal had been simple: come up with enough ideas to last a year.
In my early days, I avoided water sports. Now, I relish jumping into the bone-chilling cold of an alpine lake on a hot August day. I like challenging my body to adapt to the dip in temperature. It’s refreshing!
I have not gotten over my dislike of running. I gave up making myself enjoy endurance sports and embraced Olympic weightlifting, channeling my fast-twitch muscles into an aggressive hip snap for the snatch and clean and jerk.
I was 34 when I started writing the column, and I closed it out just after my 41st birthday. I was the strongest I had ever been. Even during a short stretch when I had surgery and was limited to walking for eight weeks, I trusted that if I worked hard enough, my strength would come back. Two months post-surgery, I was back on the weightlifting platform and doing handstands in yoga.
I had become a walker. Even now, walking is a nonnegotiable part of my day. Ten thousand steps, or roughly four to four and a half miles, are mandatory. The best days are when I hit 15,000 to 30,000 steps. I have uneven, forested trails nearby and choose the benefit of the soft trails and green canopy over walking on sidewalks during my twice-daily walks with my dog. If my brain stalls at my computer, the best medicine is to get up and walk.
Influenced by Bowman, I switched fulltime to minimal shoes, going for flat and flexible in my everyday shoes, stretching my Achilles and feet. Now that I’ve transitioned from thick hiking boots to barely-there sneakers (see “Hike in Minimal Shoes” sidebar in Month 3), a knee that had nagged me my entire adult life when hiking down steep inclines doesn’t even murmur now. I credit my strong, sturdy feet.
Other parts of my life have shifted too. When I travel, I walk no matter what, even in 100-degree desert heat in July in Phoenix. I wear a hat to shield my face and remember my body can tolerate a wide range of temperatures. I always walk whenever I can on vacations.
I never question my strength. I may feel awkward as all get out taking a dance class, or I might dislike an indoor cycling class, but I never wonder if I can do it.
By taking new classes, pushing my body day after day, playing ultimate, or learning to trail run, I’ve handled whatever was thrown at me. Was it always pretty? Nope. Was I going to master it in one go? No way. Was I going to feel a little silly? Certainly.
Was I going to have fun? Absolutely.
My delight in pushing my body was real, and it still is.
I started the column as a yoga teacher. I ended it as a mover.
get moving
After my last Fit for Life column ran in The Seattle Times, I heard from people who’d tried new activities because they followed along as I took on so many myself. I also heard from people who said, “Nicole, I could never do all the things you do.”
Oh boy. That statement stirs up the teacher in me. If you want to see me motivated to get other people to move, start by telling me the things you don’t think you can do. Tell me the injuries that prevent you from doing an activity you love. Tell me all the ways your schedule and life are too overwhelming to work out.
Tell me, right now. AndI’ll tell you—it’s time to get moving!
Becoming a mover requires you to learn to flex a new type of muscle—the one in your brain. Habits take time to build and discipline to keep in place. I’ve found the one surefire way to make movement part of your life is to do it consistently, which means you need a lot of reminders, plus choosing activities that you like. It seems so simple and obvious; it also could change your life.
Inspired by what I learned writing the Fit for Life column and experiencing the life-changing benefits of moving the human body, I designed this book to reset your approach to movement. It will help you shift from thinking that moving your body is a hassle or a burden to seeing it as something that you love, that sparks excitement, that is part of the baseline of your day. Moving is no longer the exception.
If you already love to move, this book is your opportunity to expand your understanding of your own body and movement, and flex the learn-new-things muscle.
What does it take to become a mover? You get to choose. You can move in so many ways. This book delves into 24 activities that are intended to show you many ways movement is possible while helping you build the habit of movement into your everyday life. You can move on your own, you can move with friends, and you can experience the fun, joy, and challenge of moving with a community. You can see how to add movement to days you don’t have time for a class. You decide.
I wrote