In this solo instructional video, Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, introduces Day 12 of a 30‑day healthy‑habits challenge: the "movement snack." She explains that after roughly 45 minutes of sitting—whether at a desk or on the couch—viewers should take a brief (about two‑minute) active break. Cheryl demonstrates simple stretches (wrist extensions, chest opener, elbow‑to‑head stretch) and suggests practical actions such as standing, walking to the kitchen, drinking water, or stepping outside. She highlights research showing that bodyweight air squats are as effective as walking for blood‑glucose control, and she notes additional benefits of frequent micro‑movements: improved circulation, energy, focus, and posture, as well as prevention of hip‑flexor shortening and forward‑head posture. The video ends with a call‑to‑action to join the challenge via a link in the show notes.
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Hey everyone, I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, and welcome to day 12 of your 30 Days of Healthy Habits Challenge. Today's habit is to do a movement snack after sitting too long. So I love the name of this, and normally I'm not a big— not opposed to snacks generally, but you'll do better if you just eat real meals. But, um, movement snacks, we're all about those for sure. So all this is going to do is do some kind of movement after you have been sitting for a while during the day. A lot of us have desk jobs where we sit in front of a computer. If you're very active throughout the day, you have an active job, maybe this is more like a movement snack in the evening after you've kind of wound down, you've been sitting around on the couch for a little bit. But anyway, just anytime that you've been sitting for, you know, say maybe 45 minutes. For some people, you might get antsy quicker than that. For other people, you might want to sit longer, but try not to sit longer than 45 minutes. So you'll just do like a 2-minute little movement break. Ideally, you want to stand up if you're working in front of the desk, doing stretches like I'm demonstrating here on camera. So if you're watching audio only, I'm pulling back my hand, uh, with the other hand just to stretch out my wrists. I do a lot of typing, so that is a really good one for me. You can also put your arms behind your head and grab one elbow and do a nice stretch there. Uh, so that could be the first part of your movement snack, and then to just get up for a minute, maybe go get a, a glass of water. Or, um, just wait, take a walk down the hall, maybe step outside for a minute, something like that. So your body is just really designed for frequent movement and these long times that we're sitting just really aren't good for us. So especially if you've been sitting at a meal for a little bit, having that little, um, bit of movement after a meal, whether it's a walk or something like that, is really good for blood glucose. So, uh, doing something like some air squats that— there's also a recent study on that where it showed doing some air squats, uh, when I say air squats, I just kind of mean like bodyweight squats where you don't need any equipment or anything like that, is as effective as walking for blood glucose control. So that's pretty cool. It also just can support circulation, energy, focus. These are just a nice way to break up your day and again, just not have yourself sitting all the time. Eventually when you sit for long periods and you don't counteract that, it's, you know, shortens your hip flexors. It can create a lot of issues in your body. We all get this kind of forward head when we're working in front of the computer. So things that you can do to counteract that, like bringing your arms behind your back and interlacing your hands and then really stretching back to create a stretch in the front of the chest, is a way that you can kind of counteract some of that, you know, hunched forward movement. So I am mentioning a lot of stretching, but I do want you to get out of the chair for sure. Again, try to keep it to 45 minutes. If you get up more frequently, of course, that's always amazing. As always, if you're not yet part of the challenge, you can go sign up. The link is in the show notes. If you're looking at YouTube in the description box, it'll be there. So that's today's habit, making sure you're not sitting too long, getting up outta your chair, maybe doing some stretching, but just taking a movement snack anytime you've sat for too long. So that's it for now, and I will see you again tomorrow.
