What sitting all day does to your brain and body | Keith Diaz | Your Body on Tech

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

TED Business — "What sitting all day does to your brain and body" | Keith Diaz | Your Body on Tech (August 3, 2026)

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Episode Overview

This episode of TED Business, guest-curated by Minouche Zomorodi (host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour), centers around the hidden dangers of our increasingly sedentary, screen-based lifestyles. The highlight: a TED2026 Talk by physiologist Keith Diaz from Columbia University, focused on how modern work habits are impacting both our physical and mental health—and what small, science-backed strategies can help counteract this trend.

Following Diaz’s talk, Minouche and Keith have an engaging discussion that dives deeper into his research, exploring the real-world barriers to movement, the science of “movement breaks,” and the cultural and technological forces shaping our behavior.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. The Toxicity of Sedentary Modern Life

[06:13] Keith Diaz recounts his transformation from a physically active summer camp counselor to a sedentary scientist, connecting his personal story to a wider epidemic:

• Today, the average adult spends about 187 days per year sitting or idle—over half the year.
• Sedentariness increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, and early death. Shockingly, this is true even for regular exercisers.
• Notably, exercise alone does not offset the harms of sitting all day.

Quote:

"Being highly sedentary increases your risk of diabetes, cancer, dementia, heart disease, and ultimately, early death. This is true even if you exercise regularly." — Keith Diaz [02:20]

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2. Why Exercise Isn’t Enough: The Muscle "Sponge" Analogy

[07:14]

• Muscles aren’t just for movement—they regulate metabolism, especially blood sugar.
• Muscles act like sponges: If used, they soak up glucose; if idle, they become “dry” and less effective, even for the physically fit.
• After exercise, the muscle-sponge quickly dries out unless re-wetted with more frequent movement.

Quote:

"When we exercise, it rewets the sponge. But eventually that sponge dries out if you get little to no movement the rest of your day." — Keith Diaz [08:52]

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3. The Prescription: Five-Minute Walks Every Half Hour

[09:40]

• Keith’s lab found that five-minute walks every 30 minutes drastically reduced blood sugar spikes (by ~60%, similar to medication)—even at a slow pace.
• Real-world application: After running one of the largest citizen science studies (with ~20,000 participants), most people felt energized, more focused, and less “brain fog,” beyond merely physical benefits.

Quote:

"Five-minute walks every half hour … reduced the blood sugar spike after eating by about 60%." — Keith Diaz [10:36]

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4. Movement Breaks: Why They Matter and What Works

[11:34 – 13:10]

• Movement breaks improved people's mood, reduced fatigue, and sharpened focus much more than expected.
• The benefits are emotional as well: many participants wanted to continue movement breaks because it made them feel better, not just healthier.

Quote:

"They loved that they felt energized, that they no longer felt like they were in this brain fog throughout the day, that they were able to actually better focus at work." — Keith Diaz [12:28]

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5. The Modern World: Tech, Culture & Built Environments

[15:09] – [15:59]

• Technology and convenience are engineering movement out of our lives—delivery apps, remote controls, remote work, even our attitudes now view movement as an inconvenience.
• Keith’s anecdote about his daughter seeing 20 extra seconds of walking as a “hardship” illustrates a generational shift.

Quote:

"Movement had become an inconvenience for my daughter, too." — Keith Diaz [16:01]

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6. Rethinking Productivity and Work Cultures

[15:10] – [16:01]; [39:19] – [41:16]

• There’s a pervasive belief that movement breaks are unproductive or disruptive.
• Data shows performance, focus, and mood actually improve—instantly—after such breaks.
• Employers and schools need to normalize and support movement for better outcomes: walking meetings, pacing during calls, or just moving between tasks.

Quote:

"People's work performance and how engaged they felt actually got better and improved ... just breaks in general from work are really beneficial." — Keith Diaz [39:49]

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7. Rethinking “Movement Doses” & What’s Realistically Achievable

[23:34] – [25:37]

• While 5 mins every 30 mins is ideal, breaking up sitting 5 or 6 times per day already delivers most of the benefits, particularly for fatigue and mood.
• "Stacking" movement into your actual day—walking after a meeting, pacing while on a call—can have major effects.

Quote:

"Once people take about five movement breaks a day, you start to see diminishing returns in terms of improvements in fatigue." — Keith Diaz [24:32]

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8. Mindfulness vs. Tech: The Role of Fitness Trackers

[37:20] – [39:19]

• Fitness trackers and reminders can help at first, but lasting habit change requires relearning to listen to the body’s own signals (interoception), not just relying on apps or devices.
• Anchoring movement to daily routines (like brushing teeth) and environmental cues supports better, internalized habits.

Quote:

"For us to build a habit, it has to be more so something internal ... getting to that place in our everyday lives for movement breaks, or just movement in general." — Keith Diaz [37:45]

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9. Larger Systemic Barriers: Schools, Workplaces, Urban Design

[41:50] – [43:38]

• Physical environments (offices, schools, cities) often make movement difficult or unsafe.
• There are calls for policy changes, urban redesign, and cultural shifts to enable and encourage movement.
• For now, small, creative strategies (bodyweight movements, in-place exercises) can help fill the gaps.

Quote:

"Our world wasn't designed for this. So it's like, how do we redesign it? And those are big questions." — Keith Diaz [43:38]

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10. Building a Movement (Literally and Figuratively):

[47:54] – [48:58]

• Change can start grassroots: employees and individuals normalizing and modeling movement in their own lives, making it “okay” for others.
• Fast social change is possible: the pandemic normalized Zoom in weeks; movement can become normalized, too.
• There’s hope in collective efforts and in policy advocacy.

Quote:

"It's a grassroots movement. ... Normalizing the behavior has to start with somebody being willing to do it and step out of that comfort zone." — Keith Diaz [48:20]

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Memorable Moments and Quotes

• “Is 2% of your day [30 min of exercise] really going to offset the other 98% of the day that you're not moving?” — Keith Diaz [21:49]
• “Movement breaks are ultimately about something bigger. They're about seeing those small moments in your day ... as a way to reconnect our bodies and our brains so we're not living some tired, drained version of ourselves.” — Keith Diaz [16:09]
• Minouche, summing up: "Maybe coffee’s not the answer. Maybe just moving your body and pumping some oxygen up to your brain is the thing you need." [28:24]
• “Touch grass worked really well. Maybe we need, like, dance on grass or something like that.” — Minouche Zomorodi [48:58]

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Important Timestamps

• [02:20] — The health costs of sedentariness (even for exercisers)
• [09:40] — The five-minute movement break "prescription" and its clinical benefits
• [13:10] — Real-world study: behavioral vs. physical benefits of movement breaks
• [16:01] — Cultural aversion to movement: a generational anecdote
• [20:02] – [32:12] — Deep dive: why exercise isn't enough, research origins, practical guidance, and building movement habit
• [39:19] — Overcoming workplace stigma around movement breaks and quantifying real productivity effects
• [41:50] — Movement and youth: challenges in schools and for families
• [46:29] — Technology’s accelerating impact & the need for policy solutions
• [47:54] — The power of grassroots change and normalizing movement

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Tone & Style

• Conversational, empathetic, slightly wry. Both Keith and Minouche bring personal stories, humility, and a clear passion to the table.
• It's an empowering listen—practical and compassionate, grounded in real data but very human in delivery.

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Moving throughout the day is non-negotiable for health and mental clarity—even if you exercise.
• Aim for five movement breaks a day as a realistic starting point; more is better, but perfection isn’t required.
• Don’t wait for policy or for your employer: Anchor breaks to daily tasks, and normalize visible movement in your work and home.
• Habit change is possible—start small, pair with environmental cues, and remember it’s about feeling more alive and less drained.

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Final Words

• “Let's enjoy being in our bodies and being alive. Keep walking, keep moving.” — Minouche Zomorodi [49:13]

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Transcript

[A]

Hi everyone, it's Madupa here. Today we're sharing an episode of a podcast we think you'll love. It's been handpicked by the TED staff and we think that as TED business listeners, you'll come away with a fresh idea and a totally new perspective. Enjoy and head to the link in the description for more foreign.

[B]

You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day.

[C]

Hello.

[B]

No, I am not Elise Hu. I'm Minouche Zamarodi. I'm a journalist, an author, a two time TED speaker, and you might recognize my voice because I host the TED Radio Hour podcast over on npr. So why am I here? Well, this week I am taking over from Elise to bring you something a little special, a series of episodes all about how you can live a healthier life in our high tech era. Because in April I had the honor of guest curating a session at the TED 2026 conference and I packed it full of speakers whose work I have been obsessed with and who I think will make you think differently about your body, how you use your technology, and what is keep keeping us human in this digital age. So every day this week we are bringing you one of these talks from my session, followed by a conversation with these incredible speakers to go deeper. Really, truly, they are amazing. Let's begin with a feeling, okay, that end of the day, so drained, can barely think, exhausted feeling that comes after spending hours on our devices. Physiologist Keith Diaz knows that feeling.

[D]

I was still tired, exhausted actually, but I hadn't used my body at all.

[B]

I Met Keith in 2023 when I came across research he'd done in his lab at Columbia University Medical Center. This is where he studies how lives spent mostly sitting and looking at screens affects our health.

[D]

We are living in the most sedentary era in modern history and what scientists have found is that being highly sedentary increases your risk of diabetes, cancer, dementia, heart disease, and ultimately early death. This is true even if you exercise regularly.

[B]

Yeah, it's awful. But Keith has spent his career trying to figure out the minimum amount of movement that the human body needs every day so that you don't die an early death. Our teams at NPR and Columbia ended up partnering to see if we could get his research out into the world. We wanted to find out could people take movement breaks throughout their day and take back their health from their sedentary screen filled lives? And we ended up creating one of the largest citizen science studies ever. If you follow me on social media, you have probably seen me post about this study. We called it Body Electric and very recently I put out a book by the same name which has these findings. At the heart of it, Keith explains the study and what you need to maintain your body on a daily basis and then I join him to talk about what it takes to balance our biological needs with all the conveniences of modern life so that we're not living some drained, tired version of ourselves. All that right after a quick break.

[E]

This episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Hosted by Katie Milkman, an award winning behavioral scientist and author of best selling book how to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes and everyday people about why we do the things we do. Listen to [e-mail] podcast or wherever you listen to.

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[B]

And now our TED Talk End Conversation of the Day.

[C]

My favorite job ever was as a

[D]

summer camp counselor where I was basically paid to play games with kids all day. We played capture the flag, running bases, dodgeball, went swimming in the pool every day. And at the end of the day I'd be tired, but in a good way. Not mentally drained, but physically tired. A satisfied, kind of tired. Where I'd use my body to complete

[C]

a hard day's work.

[D]

Flash forward and my job today looks very different. Even though I'm an exercise scientist, I don't get to actually do any exercise at work. Instead, my days consist of staring at a computer screen and sitting in countless meetings. The transition for me to office work was jarring. I no longer had those same feelings of satisfaction. At the end of the day's work, I was still tired. Exhausted, actually. But I hadn't used my body at all. And this shift that I experienced, I'm not alone in feeling. We are living in the most sedentary era in modern history. In a single year, the average adult will now spend a full 187 days over half of the year sitting or physically idle. The bad news is that our bodies weren't designed for this. I know because I've spent my career as a scientist studying the harms of being highly sedentary. And what scientists have found is that being highly sedentary increases your risk of diabetes, cancer, dementia, heart disease, and ultimately, early death. Worse, this is true even if you exercise regularly. To put it simply, being highly sedentary, as many of us are, is toxic. Let's start with the healthiest people among us. To use as an example, in one study, when highly trained endurance athletes were forced to bed rest, their aerobic fitness levels dropped by about 20% in just three days. What took them months to build was erased in the matter of a long weekend with no movement. This isn't unique to highly trained endurance athletes. If you took a regular, typical, healthy adult and forced them to 40 days of bed rest, their heart would show changes similar to 50 years of aging. Now, this isn't about missing a workout or two. Exercise only makes up a tiny fraction of your day. The toxicity comes from when movement begins to disappear from your life. And this begs the question, why isn't exercise alone enough? Part of the answer lies in our muscles. Our muscles are more than just the machinery that power movement. They're also really important for regulating things like our metabolism. Let's use blood sugar as an example. Our muscles are like sponges for blood sugar. When we regularly use and contract our muscles, they're like a moist sponge soaking up the sugar from the bloodstream. But when we don't regularly use and contract our muscle like a dry and shriveled up sponge, not really good at soaking up anything. Now here's the when we exercise, it rewets the sponge. But eventually that sponge dries out. If you get little to no movement the rest of your day. So what do we do? Well, we need to keep the sponge moist. Now, I'm not going to tell you that we need to move all day. Instead, I'm going to suggest that we follow the lead of an unlikely place, the tobacco industry. In their early days, cigars were their primary product. But this was the industrial age. Millions were working in factories, and those workers only got short breaks from their lines, certainly not long enough to smoke a cigar. Thus, the cigarette became the primary focus of the tobacco industry, so that these workers could get their fix in small, short doses, a few minutes at a time throughout the day. And if sitting truly is the new smoking, as the saying goes, then what better way to fight back than to use the approach of the tobacco industry? But instead of smoke breaks, movement breaks, short bouts of movement a few minutes at a time, sprinkled in throughout the day. If our muscles need regular use to function optimally, then outside of any exercise time, we need to be contracting them frequently through movement. The question that we asked in my lab is what's the least amount of movement breaks that we need in order to offset the harms of being highly sedentary? And the answer we found was a five minute walk every half hour. This reduced the blood sugar spike after eating by about 60%. That's the size of a reduction you would expect to see if you put someone on medication to manage their blood sugar levels. The cool part is that our participants weren't sprinting or even walking fast. This was a stroll. They were walking at two miles an hour. Now, I want to be honest, what I'm proposing to you as the answer

[C]

to our modern sedentary lives, our 5

[D]

minute movement breaks every hour or every half hour, I should say. The truth is that when I found out that this was the answer, I was disappointed. My immediate reaction was, there's no way people are going to do this, largely because I couldn't realistically do it myself.

[C]

And so part of me wondered whether

[D]

this should be the end of the road for my research on movement breaks.

[C]

But rather than argue with the data,

[D]

I decided to press forward and put it to the test in the real world. With a little help from public radio, we had over 20,000 people try our experiment to take movement breaks throughout the day, anywhere from every half hour to

[C]

every two hours for two weeks.

[D]

And to my surprise, the vast majority of people liked taking movement breaks. Many wanted to keep going. We had tapped into something that people were craving, an antidote to our toxic modern lives. But what really surprised me is that when we asked people what they liked about movement breaks, very few touted the physical health benefits. Instead, what they liked was how the movement breaks made them feel. They loved that they felt energized, that they no longer felt like they were in this brain fog throughout the day, that they were able to actually better focus at work. And this really resonated with me and my experiences as an office worker and how the exhaustion impacted my life. I remember when my kids were younger and I'd come home from my office job, I'd open the door and they'd greet me with energy and enthusiasm and want me to immediately start playing with them. And I just didn't have it in me. I was too drained from the day. And that's one of the most striking findings that we see in the lab. Over the course of sitting all day with no movement, people's mood plummets while their fatigue builds and builds. And that's because our muscles have a symbiotic relationship with our brains. They're in constant communication. Our biological need to contract muscle is more than just about physical health and metabolism. It's also foundational to mental and brain health. The promising news is that in our real world experiment, our participants only average four to five movement breaks a day, far below our lab tested prescription. And yet they still reduce their feelings of fatigue by about 25%. And we see this play out in the lab as well. Something as small as a one minute walk every hour can still largely offset the impact of sitting all day on your mood. So even small, short, infrequent movement breaks can counter some, not all, but some, of the hidden costs of our sedentary lives. Now, one of the biggest concerns I often hear from employers in schools about movement breaks is that they worry that it's disruptive, that it'll hurt productivity and performance. But movement doesn't mean you have to stop working. You can have walking meetings, pace around while you're on a call, get walking pads, or simply just move around while thinking. But the bigger idea and concept with movement breaks is that when you compare brain activity after movement versus after sitting, the differences are so striking. The brain after movement looks like one

[C]

certainly far more ready to learn and to work.

[D]

And yet, somewhere along the way, we decided that sitting and staring in front of a computer screen for eight hours

[C]

straight is the best way to work.

[D]

And that's where the real challenge lies. Productivity, culture, convenience, culture and technology are re engineering our lives and steadily removing the need for movement. We can have groceries delivered and robots vacuum our floors without ever getting off the couch. And the consequences of this re engineering is that we now often see movement as an inconvenience. We see it as an interruption. We see it as something to avoid. I saw this play out with my daughter recently when I had to drive her to our local library.

[C]

But when we got there, the parking lot was full, so I had to

[D]

park a little further away on the street. And she immediately started complaining that I

[C]

had parked so far away.

[D]

Now, mind you, the place I had parked may have added an additional 20 seconds of walking to her life. Not a mile, 20 seconds. But that moment hit me. Movement had become an inconvenience for my daughter, too. So I gave her a classic dad lecture. And this was met with a preteen eye roll. But a few days later, we were leaving a stadium and I was taking the escalator down. As I'm going down, I see something pass by me and I look and it's my daughter taking the regular set of stairs. Happily taking the regular set of stairs, smiling at me as she goes by. It was a small victory. And if my eye rolling preteen can make this shift on occasion, than I have hope for the rest of us. Because movement breaks are ultimately about something bigger. They're about seeing those small moments in your day when you have the opportunity to move, to see them not as inconveniences, but as a way to reconnect our bodies and our brains so we're not living some tired, drained version of ourselves. Thank you.

[B]

That was Columbia University Medical center physiologist Kathy Keith Diaz. In a minute. My conversation with Keith about the scientific findings that are about to be published. I am super excited about that and what it takes to actually change the systems that keep us so sedentary in our lives. I am always learning from Keith. You will, too. Don't go away.

[A]

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[B]

Okay, so you just gave your TED Talk about this project. I was the NPR person. We partnered with you and your team over at Columbia to do this study. But, you know, as I've sort of been talking to people about the work that we've done and the book that's come out about the project, the thing that really catches people, Keith, and really makes them mad and sad is this idea that doing a morning workout or taking an evening jog won't undo a day of sitting and looking at a screen. Can we just unpack like your own? Coming to grips with that information. Cause there is a backstory here.

[C]

Yeah, let's normalize that reaction first. That's totally appropriate. I had the same initial reaction. It's why I started the research that I'm doing. When I was a doctoral student, I came across some news headline. It was like in Runner's World magazine, and there was a headline that said something like, sitting is the new smoking, even if you're a runner. And I was like, you know, as a runner, as an exercise physiologist in training, I tend to see exercise as the cure all, prevent all, for everything. And so for this article to put it out there that, like, you know, what you do, exercise wise, you're running. That's not enough. I didn't believe it. And so I set off in my career to debunk that and show that you know, that's not true. Exercise can overcome that. Sitting isn't the kryptonite to exercise. And here we are almost 15 years later, and, man, I've come to see it in a very different light. And the way that I think about it now is a picture like the iceberg, that exercise is just the tip of the iceberg that we focus on, that's on the surface that we see and that there's so much underneath. When it comes to what does a healthy movement profile look like and why I say it's the tip of the iceberg, because if you do the Math, you exercise 30 minutes a day, that's only 2% of your day. Is 2% of your day really going to offset the other 98% of the day that you're not moving?

[B]

Can you just explain? Like, people want to know. They're like, how long is sitting for too long going to cause all these problems? What exactly is the mechanism? Let's talk about the sponge that you brought up in your talk.

[C]

Yeah. So first I want to start with by saying that if you are an exerciser, that's great, keep doing it. You are far better off and healthier as an exerciser who sits all day than as a non exerciser who sits all day. So I think that's the first and most important part, that your exercise that you're doing still matters. But what we're learning is that our body was designed in a way that it needs regular muscle contraction to function optimally. And our muscles are really important for regulating things like our metabolism. And so the example that we use in the talk is about blood sugar. And so that's the key here, is that, yes, when you exercise, that wets the sponge, undoubtedly, and helps soak up some of that sugar. But then when you sit for eight hours, by the end of that day you have a dry, shriveled up sponge again. Right. And so the key here is more kind of like a faucet dripping over your muscles, right? Like, you don't need to pour water all over it, you just need some drips to just keep it going, keep it moist and not dry out. It's not that we need to soak it every hour. We're talking little movements throughout the day just to keep it moist enough. That's what we're looking to do.

[B]

So the gold standard that you found was this five minutes of movement for every half hour. And people are like, what I Can't do. Like that's gonna be like 16 breaks that you're talking about. What is a better way to think about it based on all the data that you've collected from thousands of people and of course, just talking to people about what is possible in real life.

[C]

Yeah. So, you know, if you were to pick a dose that you were really worried about, managing your blood sugar levels, managing your blood pressure levels, that's the dose that the science at least looks like we should recommend. But what we found in the real world is that people really had a hard time sticking to that regimented clock. But there were other doses of movement that we tested that were still beneficial. Maybe you didn't get all the benefits. So, for example, moving every hour for five minutes still reduced blood pressure by almost five points and still improved a person's mood, reduced their feelings of fatigue, helped them feel more energized. Right. And so instead of 16 movement breaks, we're talking about eight movement breaks a day. But I'll give folks even more encouraging news. I've been crunching our body electric data more to see what's the really the least amount out in the real world that people really need to do to strive for. And what we're finding is that once people take about five movement breaks a day, you start to see diminishing returns in terms of their improvements in fatigue. Right. Like after about five to six breaks a day, you don't get that much extra benefit from doing seven, eight or nine. That's somewhere about five is where you maximize your benefits for reducing your feelings of fatigue. But you know, I think part of the bigger message here that I think people should take home is that this is really about that our bodies just need regular movement throughout the day. Like that's the take home more than anything, that you just can't sit for hours at a time. And that's what our world is designed. And we can get into that.

[D]

But.

[C]

Right. Like recognizing that if you're worried about your health, then you do need to find ways to integrate movement and sprinkle it in throughout your day.

[B]

I think the other thing that people have been really connecting with is that tired, can't focus, feeling like everyone feels like they have adhd. And I feel like we have talked so much in our culture about how too much time online and social media is the reason why we're having all these mental health problems. But actually maybe some of that is biological. It's because we haven't paid enough attention to our physical needs as well. And not just like athletics or going to the gym, but like this, tending to our anatomy.

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. You know, when we kept analyzing the data time and time again, we kept seeing this effect on how people felt, their mood and their fatigue and their energy levels. That's what kept kind of resonating and standing out consistently. No matter how we approach the studies physiologically, it makes so much sense to me now, and I think we're learning so much more about this. You know, there was a study that found in flies who have a much less complex and much smaller brain than ours, they found 51 proteins in a fly's brain that come from muscle. And so I can only imagine how many proteins are coming from muscle in a human's brain. And so we're learning that there's these chemical messengers called myokines that are muscles when they contract, release into circulation and then they travel and communicate to other organs. So we're learning through a lot of these basic science studies that there's something to this kind of muscle brain crosstalk and relationship that probably could explain some of what you're describing, Minouche of like people not realizing that like actually our brains and our muscles have this symbiotic relationship and they're constant communication.

[B]

How much does oxygen also play a role in this? In that like muscles being stimulated pushes oxygen literally up our bodies to our brain. And of course we need oxygen if we're switching tasks, constantly opening another window, answering another email. We burn through oxygen really fast when we're so busy on our screenshots.

[C]

Yeah. And the thing about our brain is that even like a slight change in your oxygen levels and your cerebral blood flow, you can feel that and that comes across as feelings of fatigue. Right. And so when we're sitting all day, it's not causing drastic reductions in your cerebral blood flow, but there's still reductions enough that your brain feels that and likely interprets that as feeling exhausted and feeling fatigued. And so that's why like the muscle contraction and getting up and movement helps kind of restore that cerebral blood flow, that oxygen rich blood that your brain really needs to function optimally. I think that's one of the key pieces of why people are feeling so fatigued at the end of the day is that the brain sense that just slight turning down of the dial because their muscles weren't active for so long.

[B]

Maybe people know some of this, you know, ambiently know it, but actually hearing it like out loud and specifically and then reminding yourself of it when you're sitting at your screen and you're getting kind of sleepy that like, guess what? Maybe coffee's not the answer. Maybe just moving your body and pumping some oxygen up to your brain is the thing you need. I guess I'm curious then, where does the research go from here?

[C]

I mean, we just crowdsourced from 20,000 people. Like what works and what doesn't in terms of how to take movement breaks in the real world. And so for us from here it's how do we build interventions, how do we build programs that we can roll out in workplaces that help people do this? Right. The number one reason people didn't take movement breaks is they forgot. I think that's the one thing that really stood out to me was that sitting is so ingrained in our lives that we don't even notice it. We don't even notice that we've sat for four hours straight. Like we've, we've tuned out to that. Our body's probably telling us that, like, I don't feel so good right now. I'm feeling really stiff, I'm feeling lethargic. I don't have great focus right now. And what do we do? We just press forward, we keep going. And that was the number two barrier that were challenged that people reported. I was too busy, I was too focused on what I was doing and I didn't want to break away. And so that combination of not being as mindful as we need to be about our sitting habits and then just this notion or idea that I gotta push through and keep doing my work, those two are really the biggest barriers that people have to taking movement breaks. And I totally get it and understand it. It's wrestling with how do we change our cultures, our social norms to address those behaviors. Cause those are deep rooted issues that we have to tackle.

[B]

Here's the thing I've been thinking about too, which is, you know, there is so much distrust right now amongst the American public into medical science and, and how. You know, obviously this was a self directed clinical trial and that's never going to replace like a double blind drug studies. But I think what our paper documents is that maybe we should be taking people in more to do the science and maybe they'll trust the results more because they were part of finding it.

[C]

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, having done this and had this experience, I'm like, how do we just keep doing it this way? Like this was such a way to tap into citizen science. And I also thought it was such a powerful way of like we harnessed kind of this collective Spirit of we're all doing this together. Like, there was this energy around the project where everybody just felt invested in this and think about, like, how do you harness that collectivism to help find fuel, behavior change and to change how we operate as a society in terms of managing our health. We had this issue where our server crashed the first day, right? And people got mad because our server crashed and we couldn't start. But rather than like, some people were upset, but like, how many people reached out to us, were like, we want to help you fix it, like, no, we're all in this together trying to figure out an answer to a question and we all have equal stake in it. And that's what I really loved. And I think it's a really different way to do science. And I think if we do more of that, we can develop tools, interventions, healthcare that actually works for people. And that's what I really liked about the project.

[B]

It makes me think that there must be so many other clinical trials that are locked up in labs that need to be set free into the real world to be given a tryout, see if we can do this. Things that maybe scientists are like, well, forget it, this is impossible, but maybe we could try.

[C]

Yeah, we kind of learned, like, it's possible, but we're gonna have to pivot a little bit. And so doing this really early on and getting that feedback from people in the real world I think can really help scientists figure out, like, how to then move forward in the best way possible. Right. And so I think that was a key piece of our study, is that we didn't like spend 10 years developing this to then try it out in the real world. We tried it one time in the lab and then right away to the real world. Tell us what you think. And so I think it was really important for us to do it that way rather than spend decades working on this to find out it actually is not going to work in the real world.

[B]

We're going to take a quick break, feel free to move, and then we'll be right back.

[F]

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[C]

AT&T business wireless connecting changes everything.

[E]

This episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab hosted by Katie Milkman, an award winning behavioral scientist and author of best selling book how to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes and everyday people about why we do the things we do. Listen to [e-mail] podcast or wherever you listen.

[G]

There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. Stand still. Not a chance. You're a lifelong learner who's come this far. Now we are here to help you keep going further. Capella University what can't you do? Visit capella. Edu to learn more.

[B]

One of the questions that I've been working to figure out too is this relationship to technology. Where does that fit into this? Like, did we have this sedentary problem in 1986 before everyone had smartphones? Or is this a very particular 2026 issue?

[C]

It's both. So if you kind of map out the trajectories of our sedentary time and you know, how much time we spend watching tv, how much time we spend sitting in a car, how much time we spend sitting at work, it's kind of been like steadily increasing across decades, but it has really ramped up when the smartphone error came about. Right. So in the 2014, 2015, 2016, there were dramatic increases in people's overall tech usage in that time. We're talking like 40% increases in people's tech usage over that period of time. I think the pandemic probably accelerated that even more. So we've been creeping up steadily as technology has advanced and developed, and then I think it just really kicked up even more. In the last 10 to 15 years.

[B]

Some researchers are looking into whether technology interferes with something called interoception, this idea that the body sort of sends messages like I need a break, I need to get a snack, I need to go to the bathroom. And that we're so captivated by what is on our devices that we ignore those signals that the body is sending us.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, we haven't measured it so much in our lab studies, but I think it's something that has long resonated with me and this idea or notion that this process of not having that interoception and not being mindful of our bodily cues is something that starts when we're in kindergarten and we go into schools and teachers tell us to sit in our chairs for seven, eight hours a day and that you shouldn't get up and move and so you have your teachers harping on that. You sit at your desk all day and then you get that message. Your entire school career, and then you transition, you know, to go to college. It's much of the same. And you go into a workplace and it's much the same, Right. So we're kind of just training ourselves to ignore those sensations. So that's part of this going back to the social norms piece of this, is that we have this expectation that we must ignore those cues.

[B]

So your body's cues. A lot of people rely these days on their device, a smartphone, to ping them. You know, it's time to get up, or they're sort of outsourcing it because, you know, technology is amazing and they can count their steps and their blood, heart rate and all those things. You're actually not a fan, if I understand correctly, of fitness trackers. You've told me. We did see that people who adhered to the protocol ended up needing their timers less. They did sort of get back into the rhythm of what their body needed. So, like, what, how do you approach this?

[C]

I think we learned from the body lecture study that people need reminders to start, right? Because you first have to kind of check back in and realize, like, how much actually am I sitting and how much often do I need to get up and move around. But you know, why I'm not as much of a fan of it is that you're relying on kind of external cues still. You're not relying on your interoception. You're not checking back in on your body. You're just relying on a device to tell you to do this. And where I'd love to see this and what the science kind of tells us on human behavior change is that for us to build a habit, it has to be more so something internal. And so when we kind of learn how to check back in with our bodies, we don't have to rely on external cues to do that. That behavior is much more likely to stick. The example I always use is brushing teeth is like the ultimate health behavior that we all aspire to. Get people to eat as good as they are at brushing their teeth or exercise or move as much as they are good at brushing their teeth. And that's because brushing teeth is something that we have since we were kids, were taught and trained to do. But we also have tied it to cues in our day. We automatically are cued by our environment that like, oh, yeah, I put my pajamas on, I go brush my teeth. Like, that's just the natural part of it. And so getting to that place in our everyday lives for movement breaks, or just movement in general of like, okay, I just. I've just finished a work task. I'm gonna go take a movement break before I go on to the next one. I just finished a meeting. Before I go to the next one, I'm going to move right? And tying it to cues in our day rather than relying on some kind of device to remind us, you know, like, I remember I was in a store one day and two workers were sitting, and I heard one of them say, oh, my watch just went off to tell me to stand up. And then she looked at it and she's like, nah. And they just kept working. And like, they just kind of like both looked at each other like, yeah, no, we're just going to ignore that and keep going. Like, I just feel like that's where it ends up with these external reminders. Right. It works for some people, but it doesn't work for everybody.

[B]

I'm old enough to remember that people wouldn't forget to go out for a cigarette. So let's talk about this analogy of smoke breaks, cigarette breaks, short breaks. What do you do when you sit outside and smoke a cigarette? You're taking deep breaths. Okay. You're filling yourself with smoke. But maybe people were just looking for a get away from everybody. I get away from the grind, take some deep breaths. And that used to be fine. How do we begin to normalize something without people thinking that, like, oh, they're slacking.

[C]

Yeah, I wish I had, like, the answer to change that. We looked at it in the body electrode study. This notion idea that if you're away from your desk that you're not productive. Right. That's going to hurt your work performance. And what we found in the study was that that's actually not the case, that people's work performance and how engaged they felt actually got better and improved. And there's lots of science on this outside of just movement breaks. But just breaks in general from work actually are really beneficial for helping you concentrate better, to have better executive function, better memory. And movement in particular really helps with a lot of those pieces too. Right. And so it's getting employers to kind of see this perspective of actually sitting for eight hours straight is not the best way to work. And in fact, a healthy and more productive workforce is one that is actually taking movement breaks. One of the things that we see with movement breaks is that those improvements in mood that people experience is instantaneous. It's not like you see it at the end of the day, you feel better right there in that moment. And so harnessing that and creating a positive feedback loop where, like, I took a break. Oh, I actually felt better, or getting us to focus on. I like how I perform better at work when I take these movement breaks. This is gonna make me feel better and actually make me a better worker. I think, as a way to help start to address some of this.

[B]

Can we talk about younger generations of people and how we start to make this part of their lives? Because recess is not a law in the majority of US States. And movement breaks. You know, some teachers do them, some don't. I'm thinking, you know, you have a teenage daughter who you tell a story about life being inconvenient if you have to move to execute. What's it like to be a parent of a teenager in this time when this is what the norm is. Sedentary with a screen. The world, as you say, is being built around those two things.

[C]

Yeah. I still think we're struggling with both of my kids, of how to fit more movement into their days. And part of it is it's so structural. Changing the classroom environment would be one helpful. 2. Allowing kids to stand up and go take movement breaks is really hard to do. And how schools can easily allow that to happen in a safe way, too, I think is logistically challenging. I think what we've strived to do is kind of try to change our daughter's viewer relationship with movement and kind of fostering that mentality of, like, this can help with your mental health. And this is a way for you to reset and also to change your perspective to see where there are opportunities for movement. And so one of the things that we always do is, like, she loves going to the library and getting books. And our library is about two miles from our house. And we'll sit there and be like, do we need to drive our car?

[B]

Ah, I love it.

[C]

Like, can we, like, go ride our bikes?

[D]

Right? Yeah.

[C]

I guess it's kind of rethinking, like, where can we actually fit movement in?

[B]

I'm laughing because in my family, it's like a joke that we always end up walking by the side of some highway when we go on vacation. Cause my husband and I are like, I think we could walk. Like, we'll look at the map and be like, it's not that far. I think it could walk. And then so many American cities are not set up for you to walk a mile from one place to another. So, like, it is you know, if there are no sidewalks, if there's no safe way to get somewhere, if you live in a neighborhood where there's pollution or you don't feel safe, like it's. It's so frustrating when people want to do these things and yet there's nowhere to go because they work in an office park and because everyone drives to and from everything.

[C]

Yeah, I feel the same way. And that's what's like, so discouraging, I think, is that, like, school environments, our neighborhood environments, our world wasn't designed for this. And so it's like, how do we redesign it? And those are big questions. And it's going to take a lot of work to think about how we redesign these things. And so I think part of our hope with the work that we do and the project that we did, was to find small, simple ways to do this that you could easily fit into your day. And the bioelectric product, the study that we do in the lab, it's all walking based, but you don't have to walk, right? Like, this is about muscle contraction. And there are studies that show, like, if you did squats and high knees and calf raises, you could still see a lot of the same effects that we saw with walking. Right. So it's just about getting movement. And it doesn't have to be you leaving your house to do that.

[B]

You know, I don't think I've ever asked you this. Was there a moment back in the day when you were trying to research why working out once a day wasn't the antidote for sitting all day? Was there like a moment, the aha moment when you were like, ah, it needs to be interstitial. What led you to that conclusion?

[C]

What really pushed me to go further down this road was in 2018, the U.S. fiscal Activity Guidelines came out. It was the second time they'd ever released guidelines. And for the first time, they actually said, in addition to exercise, people need to sit less, move more. Right. So they're acknowledging for the first time ever that it's not just about exercise, that your sitting also matters. But those guidelines were sit less, move more. And I remember thinking, like, those are terrible guidelines. And that's not to bash the people who made those guidelines. That's all the evidence we had at that time. Right. But like, if we're gonna get people to do something about this, we need more than sit less, move more. That's what I liked about the movement breaks concept. It was a way to give someone an actionable plan to do something about It Than just, oh, you should sit less and move more.

[B]

Mm. I mean, it's interesting. Here we are. You said that was the 2000 and tens. And, like, AI is becoming a thing. And, you know, there's this fantasy that AI will all set us free and we'll have time to frolic in fields five times a day. But that is not what people are seeing. If anything, AI is causing more compression of work, making people sit for longer periods of time, because they're also overseeing the work of eight AI agents or whatever. So I guess my question is, what happens next? Our relationship with technology is getting even more entangled. So are we at this point where we have to be more specific, Put language around or doses, as you say, around things that, like, you know, probably when I was a kid, if someone was like, did you get enough movement today? That would be kind of like, maybe not in school, but, like, generally, we were always moving. This is not getting better.

[C]

Yeah, I wish I had a great answer to that. I'm equally as concerned. And this doesn't change unless policies are developed around the workplace and around technology. Because I don't know how much the tech companies care about people's bodies and their health. Some do. Don't get me wrong.

[B]

But they care about their efficiency, right?

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

And.

[B]

And their productivity.

[D]

And maybe.

[C]

Maybe it's going back to that point of, like, harnessing, like, this idea notion that, like, a body that moves is a more efficient and productive body as well. Maybe it's tapping into that and, like, what moves the needle for employers. Right. To allow this to happen. That's kind of where my mind goes. I was talking with a journalist recently, was doing another piece on sitting, and she's like, I feel like I've been writing the same piece for 10 years. Do you feel the same? I'm like, yes. I feel like I keep saying the same story again and again and again, and people want to keep talking about it, but nothing is changing. And that's where I just feel like I feel stuck, because I'm like, how much do I have to keep talking about it? How much more science needs to come out before somebody starts doing something about it? And that's what really concerns me.

[B]

I'm gonna offer a little bit more positive anecdote. One itch is we can change our habits really fricking fast. Look at us getting on Zoom for everything during the pandemic. I'm starting to hear from people. Everybody's reading the book and the work that Keith is doing, and we did it today. So, like, at first, they'll be like, oh, my God, we are out of our seats. We're not working. Oh, actually, we felt better, and we got to the end of the day without feeling exhausted.

[C]

Yeah. What you're getting at is it's a grassroots movement. Right. Like, the top ain't changing things. So we're gonna have to start from a different perspective and a different approach, and it's this trickle effect, and normalizing the behavior has to start with somebody being willing to do it and step out of that comfort zone. Like, I'm always that guy in a zoom call who, like, is walking on a treadmill while they're. Everybody else is sitting.

[B]

I know it's weird to see you sitting right now, actually.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

When you make it part of, like, oh, that's totally a normal thing to do, and I wouldn't even think twice about it. We have to start changing that perception and that culture, and it may have to start with just people doing it and making it normal.

[B]

I think we need a meme like, touch grass worked really well. Maybe we need, like, dance on grass or something like that. We're going to figure it out, Keith. We're on the journey.

[C]

Totally.

[B]

All right, time for a movement break. Keith, great to see you. Thank you. As always.

[C]

Keep it going.

[B]

Keep it going. Exactly. Oh. What I love about Keith is his openness to experimentation and his patience in taking deep science and turning it into language that we can all use in our daily lives. We don't have to be researchers. Like, right now, actually, I am going to wrap up this episode by standing up in my studio and taking one of my many daily movement breaks. Please feel free to join me by walking or pumping your arms in place or marching side to side. That's what I'm doing. Feels good to move. It's true. And I think that is the most delightful thing that I found working with Keith and the thousands of listeners who were willing to share their time and data with us for. For the original project and my book Body Electric, that just came out. People are interested in science, and, you know, living with technology is one big experiment. And so they are ready and willing to be part of figuring out how to live with their devices the way that they want to, not just how the tech companies want them to. I think this is part of how we restore people's trust in the medical community, that we bring them into the process. We work together to find answers. Meanwhile, I love Keith's positive message. Let's enjoy being in our bodies and being alive. Keep walking, Keep moving. That was Keith Diaz at TED 2026 in conversation with me, Minouche Zamorodi. You can also watch Keith's full [e-mail] on tomorrow's episode. All the things you know or think you know about kids and social media. Child psychologist Candace Odgers says not so fast. Tomorrow, her talk our conversation and why she wants you to reconsider how you think about teens and screens and adults and screens for that matter. That's it for today. If you're curious about 10 Ted's Curation, visit ted.com curation guidelines Ted Talks Daily is a podcast from Ted. This episode was produced by Lucy Little and Katie Monteleone. It was edited by Alejandra Salazar with editing support from Maggie Bishop, Banban Chang, Sanaz Meshkinpour and me. Keith's talk and conversation was fact checked by the TED research team and this episode was mixed by Matthew Polis. The TED Talks Daily team includes Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Tobner and Tansika Sangmar Nivong, with support from Daniela Balerazzo, Valentina Bohanini, bianbanchang and Lainey Lott. Special thanks to Sanaz Mesh Kinpour and my team at NPR's TED Radio Hour for all their help on this special takeover. And to my co curator at TED2026, a very special thank you to David Biela. You can hear more from these speakers on the TED Radio Hour with episodes coming out throughout the summer. I'm Anoush Zamorodi. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea and conversation for your feed. Thank you so much for listening. I'm gonna sit down now.

[E]

This episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab hosted by Katie Milkman, an award winning behavioral scientist and author of best selling book how to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes and everyday people about why we do the things we do. Listen to [e-mail] podcast or wherever you listen.

[B]

Latte for Keenan.

[F]

That's me.

[B]

Hey, you're.

[F]

Yeah.

[B]

Buying a car online on Autotrader.

[F]

Really? But unlike other sites, you can start online, test drive with a local dealer, then finish online or at the dealership.

[B]

Cool.

[C]

Enjoy.

[F]

Buy your car online on Autotrader. Really?

[G]

There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. Stand still. Not a chance. You're a lifelong learner who's come this far. Now we are here to help you keep keep going further. Capella University. What can't you do? Visit Capella Edu to learn more.