I’ve done this more times than I can count.
I’m tired.
So I sit down.
Makes perfect sense.
Twenty minutes later I’m still sitting there and now I’m really tired. Apparently there may be a reason for that.
A new study pulled together data from 8,223 people in 14 countries. Instead of asking people six months later how active they thought they’d been, researchers had nearly a million hours of actual movement data from accelerometers, along with more than 321,000 reports of how people were feeling at the time.
And one of the strongest connections they found was between moving and feeling energetic.
Not running a marathon.
Not crushing a workout.
Moving.
Now, this is where the internet will inevitably turn this into:
TIRED? NEVER REST. SCIENCE SAYS GO FOR A WALK.
No.
Sometimes you’re tired because you’re tired. You didn’t sleep. You’re sick. You’ve been working your ass off. Your body needs a break.
If so Sit down. Take a nap. Go to bed.
But I think there’s another kind of tired most of us recognize. The I’ve been sitting here so long I don’t feel like getting up tired.
And the strange part… sometimes waiting until you have enough energy to move may have the whole thing backward.
The researchers found that people tended to feel more energetic after periods when they’d been moving. They also found the reverse: when people felt more energetic, they tended to move more afterward. The effects weren’t huge and they weren’t the same for everybody.
So which comes first?
Apparently both.
Move a little, feel a little more energetic. Feel a little more energetic, move a little more.
There’s even older experimental research pointing in the same direction. Sedentary people who regularly felt fatigued were assigned to low-intensity exercise, moderate exercise or no exercise for six weeks.
Both exercise groups reported more energy. And the people doing the easier exercise actually had the bigger reduction in fatigue.
I like that part.
Because maybe the answer when you’re sitting there feeling like a slug isn’t:
Get your butt to the gym.
Maybe it’s just:
Get out of the chair and see what happens.
That’s a considerably smaller project.