A 5-Minute ‘Movement Snack’ Will Give You More Energy

Here’s what the researchers landed on: Get up and move for five minutes, once an hour, which Diaz calls a “movement snack.” The best part? You don’t even have to hit that target perfectly to notice a difference.

Instead of bringing people into a tightly controlled lab, Diaz’s team studied people in the real world. They studied more than 19,000 adults spanning a wide range of ages, jobs, and work environments, and asked them to take five-minute walking breaks every 30, 60, or 120 minutes. (Adults in wealthy countries sit for an average of 11 to 12 hours a day, which is most of your waking life.)

Diaz spent years running the controlled version of this experiment—the kind where he could order people onto a treadmill on a strict schedule. “In the lab, we can get perfect compliance,” he says. “Every half hour, every hour: ‘Get up, get on the treadmill, walk.’” Real life is messier. “People have lives, they’re working, there’s pressure,” he says. “They’re trying their best.”