Few, if any, people set out to live an unhealthy life – I'd wager most actively chase the opposite. But there's a significant disconnect between wanting to be fitter and actually doing the things we know will get us there. Why?
To answer this, I like to look at exercise like a detective in a crime drama – people need motive, means and opportunity. It requires enough gumption to get out of the door; the time, energy and resources to take part; and a conducive environment to keep going.
These criteria are hard to hit in 2026, courtesy of a cost of living crisis, increasingly busy schedules, and alternatives to exercise (phones, social media, streaming services and so on) being specifically engineered to steal your time.
There's no absolute solution to this, but we can shrink the obstacles standing in our way to make them easier to overcome. To do this, the best expert-backed method I've encountered is exercise snacking.
The premise is simple: short bursts of equipment-free activity that can test your muscles and get you out of breath, spread throughout the day in digestible chunks lasting no more than five minutes. For example, climbing a few flights of stairs at a brisk pace or performing a series of squats and press-ups at your desk – this article has plenty of ideas to help you get started.
For most, this no-cost approach tends to be more palatable than a string of hour-long gym trips or lengthy runs. Exercise snacking also breaks up lengthy periods of sitting down, which can have bonus health benefits, according to recent research from Brunel University London.
"The concept of 'exercise snacks' has genuine research support," Jack McNamara, clinical exercise physiology course leader at the University of East London, told me in a recent interview.
"The evidence suggests those snacks are most effective when they're vigorous enough to elevate heart rate meaningfully and when they're part of a broader pattern of regular physical activity. For the many who cite lack of time as their main barrier to exercise, knowing that a few minutes here and there genuinely counts could be transformative."
This advice is less for seasoned exercise veterans and more for those who struggle to squeeze movement into their regular routine.
If you are in this latter group and can factor three or more five-minute bursts of exercise into each day, you will have strengthened muscles across your entire body and accumulated 105 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise (exercise that gets you breathless) by the end of the week.
This is in excess of the NHS physical activity guidelines of "at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity a week". If you can accumulate a decent number of daily steps too, you could transform your health.
To what extent? For this query, I spoke to University of Sydney researchers Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis and Dr Nicholas Koemel. Their work confirms that small positive changes can have a disproportionately impressive impact on how you look, feel and function.
Their large-scale study found that, for those with poor sleep, diet and exercise levels, an extra half-portion of fruit or vegetables, 96 seconds of exercise and 15 minutes of sleep per day could measurably improve health and longevity.
"These are accessible and manageable changes that can make a significant difference if people incorporate them, ideally simultaneously, into their lives in the long term," says Professor Stamatakis.
Much of his research revolves around finding accessible pathways to better health for those who don't currently exercise. This group, he says, "is at the highest risk of chronic disease and compromised lives".
"It's about giving options to the 80 or 85 per cent of the population who are not keen on doing regular, structured exercise," he adds. "It's not an optimal fitness solution – if you want to become fully fit, of course structured exercise is the best way to go, but it comes with major commitments.
"We want to lower the bar of participation and lower the bar of getting benefit from movement."
In summary: if you've already built a regular exercise habit, you are pulling one of the biggest levers available for better health. If you struggle to squeeze gym sessions and other beneficial behaviours into each week, just know that the threshold for making meaningful changes to your health is likely far lower than you think. Or, to nick an old Tesco slogan: "Every little helps."
Hope this helps!
Harry
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