Recent research has pointed out that working out, in this example running for an hour at a moderate pace, has very different effects on your body's response to it. (1)
We have all been told that high intensity exercise yields better healthy adaptations than lower or moderate intensity.
Your basic activity levels for the four days prior to the exercise had a massive effect on how your body responds to that bout of exercise. Think sedentary desk job versus manual labor.
The normal expected response to a bout of 60 minutes of exercise is to reduce triglycerides for an extended period of time following your workout, which allows for a reduction in adipose tissue (fat).
For those who had ran one hour at 65% of maximum effort, but had fewer than 1700 steps the previous four days, the exercise had almost no effect on reducing triglycerides in the blood..... now that is depressing.....
This research confirms that you can meet the required exercise amounts each week to stay healthy (150 minutes of moderate activity) yet still not achieve any of the benefit if you don't have sufficient activity level outside of that.
We can extrapolate from this research a couple ideas.
You have to move more... .And not just in exercise. The old adage, take the stairs, walk/bike to work, REALLY matters.
You have to have a variety of exercise. Running the same pace, same dose a few times a week isn't really enough to maximize your response to the effort of your workout. If you are going to put the time and effort in....
What is 'sufficient amount of activity' outside of your workout? It seems that 7800 steps has been shown to be a good number to push for. 10,000 steps has a nice ring to it....
Today is a great day to get a new healthy habit!
Dr. Matt
1. Inactivity Causes Resistance to Improvements in Metabolism After Exercise
Edward F. Coyle; Heath M. Burton; Remzi Satiroglu Exerc Sport Sci Rev. 2022;50(2):81-88.