Movement That Fits Real Life: How Small Efforts Can Support Brain and Body Health

By Dr. Felicia Stoler, DCN, MS, RDN, FACSM, FAND

For healthcare professionals, finding time to exercise can feel nearly impossible. Between long shifts, patient care, charting, commuting, family responsibilities, and everything else competing for attention, movement often gets pushed to “later.”

But later can easily become never.

In the third and final session of the Healthcare Professional Reset Series, Move Your Body, Change Your Brain, Dr. Felicia Stoler, DCN, MS, RDN, FACSM, FAND, challenged the idea that meaningful movement requires an hour at the gym or even a traditional workout at all.

Her message: You may not need more time. You may need a different approach.

Being Busy Isn’t the Same as Being Active

For healthcare professionals in particular, this distinction matters.

You may spend hours on your feet, move from one task to another all day, and finish a shift physically exhausted. But as Dr. Stoler explained, being physically drained isn’t necessarily the same as getting intentional movement.

Standing for long periods and maintaining repetitive postures can still place stress on the body. What the body needs is dynamic movement that gets different muscle groups working and provides a physical outlet for stress.

In other words: hard work and healthy movement aren’t always the same thing.

Movement Supports More Than Physical Fitness

Exercise is often framed around weight, appearance, or physical conditioning. But movement affects far more than muscles.

During the webinar, Dr. Stoler explored the relationship between physical activity and brain health, mood, stress, sleep, metabolism, and long-term health.

As she put it, “Movement is medicine for the mind, the mood and the metabolism.”

Even relatively short periods of movement can make a difference. That’s important when the biggest barrier to exercise is often the belief that there isn’t enough time for it to count.

The 10-Minute Rule: Something Is Better Than Nothing

One of the biggest misconceptions about exercise is that you need a long workout to make it worthwhile.

You don’t.

Dr. Stoler encouraged participants to embrace the 10-minute rule and move away from an all-or-nothing mindset.

A 10-minute brisk walk counts. So does five minutes of stairs during a break, standing and pacing during a phone call, or a few chair squats between tasks.

And those small periods can add up quickly. Five minutes of movement every hour becomes 40 minutes across an eight-hour workday.

The goal isn’t to wait until you have the perfect amount of time.

Use the time you already have.

Your Environment Can Be Your Gym

Movement doesn’t have to happen in a designated fitness space.

As Dr. Stoler told attendees, “Your body is the equipment, your environment is the gym.”

Opportunities for movement already exist throughout the day:

• Take a walking meeting when a screen isn’t necessary.
• Stand or pace during a phone call.
• Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
• Do chair squats between tasks.
• Stretch while waiting for your computer to restart.
• Walk instead of sitting while you’re waiting for an appointment or pickup.
• Park farther away and add a few extra steps.

None of these requires changing clothes, going to a gym, or finding another hour in the day. The shift is simply learning to recognize movement opportunities when they appear.

Don’t Wait for Motivation, Build a System

Knowing movement is good for us isn’t always enough to make it happen.

Dr. Stoler suggested using environmental cues to make movement easier to remember and repeat: set a timer, use a smartwatch reminder, place a sticky note at your workstation, find an accountability partner, or keep a simple movement log.

Instead of relying on motivation, create a system that prompts the behavior.

That distinction matters far beyond exercise. Sustainable health behaviors are easier to maintain when they’re built into the environments and routines people already have.

And Don’t Forget Strength

Movement isn’t only about getting more steps.

Strength training also plays an important role in maintaining muscle, metabolism, bone health, and functional independence as we age. And again, it doesn’t necessarily require a gym.

Chair squats, desk push-ups, calf raises, seated leg lifts, and isometric exercises are all examples Dr. Stoler shared that can help incorporate muscle engagement into everyday routines.

The Biggest Takeaway: Consistency Over Perfection

The most effective movement routine isn’t necessarily the most intense one. It’s the one you can continue.

Dr. Stoler encouraged participants not to abandon movement because they missed a day or couldn’t complete the workout they had planned. Instead, adjust.

Her advice for difficult days:

• “Reduce on bad days, never to zero.”
• Take a shorter walk. Do a few minutes instead of 30. Take the stairs. Stand during a call.
• Small efforts still count and repeated small efforts can become sustainable habits.

From Knowing What to Do to Actually Doing It

Across all three sessions of the Healthcare Professional Reset Series, one theme continued to emerge: healthier behaviors don’t have to be perfect to make a difference.

Whether we’re talking about nutrition, sleep, or movement, knowing what to do is only part of the equation. The bigger challenge is making those behaviors realistic enough to fit into everyday life.

That’s also central to how GoMo Health approaches behavior change.

Through personalized engagement and behavioral science, GoMo Health helps healthcare organizations deliver the right support at the right time—making healthier actions easier for patients, members, and employees to understand, adopt, and sustain.

Because lasting behavior change is not built around perfection. It’s built around what people can realistically do next.

Watch the Healthcare Professional Reset Series

Catch up on all three sessions featuring Dr. Felicia Stoler:

• Nutrition: Eat Like Your Life Depends On It
• Sleep: The Most Powerful Medicine
• Movement: Move Your Body, Change Your Brain