For those new to exercising, improving fitness doesn’t have to mean enduring intense high-intensity interval training (HIIT) classes or running sprints. Even a simple adjustment like walking at a slightly faster pace can lead to notable health benefits.
According to Dr Aguiar, “Accumulating a high volume of walking throughout the day, then focussing on doing at least 30 minutes of faster walking or jogging, would be a way to lower your metrics for each of the progressive risk factors.” This advice highlights that just increasing your walking speed can help manage or even reduce risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome.
Interestingly, even very brief periods of more intense movement appear to be effective. “One of the really interesting findings from our paper was that, if you look at people’s highest one minute of activity across each day, averaged across the monitoring period, that was a very strong signal for whether they had one or more of the metabolic syndrome risk factors present,” Dr Aguiar explains. “Even something as little as one minute of high-intensity activity could be beneficial.”
Applying this in real life could mean continuing your regular walking habits but including a short, brisk segment when you’re running errands or on your lunch break. Increasing your walking cadence — the number of steps taken per minute — has also been connected to better health markers. A slightly faster pace during regular walks might be all it takes to start seeing results.
While goals like weight loss or getting stronger tend to dominate the average person’s fitness resolutions, improving metabolic syndrome risk factors is a goal worth considering. Though it may sound clinical or distant, it directly links to common and relatable outcomes like weight loss, reduced abdominal fat, and improved energy levels.
“Exercise is one part of a behavioural strategy to lose weight, which would reduce visceral adiposity,” Dr Aguiar explains. Visceral adiposity refers to fat stored deep in the abdomen, around essential organs. This type of fat is especially concerning because it doesn’t just sit inert — it interferes with the body’s natural metabolic functions.
“We know that if you store fat mass around your abdominal area, that’s more dangerous than storing fat mass in your lower body or subcutaneously [just under the skin]. Visceral fat around your vital organs wreaks a lot of havoc in terms of the metabolic signalling that goes on there. Essentially, it’s dangerous to store a lot of abdominal fat because it changes the way our vital organs in that area function,” says Dr Aguiar.
Engaging in greater amounts of physical activity at a higher intensity can aid in reducing both body weight and abdominal fat. Exercise alone, even without dietary changes, can be a strong ally in the fight against metabolic syndrome. “Especially for individuals who are overweight and obese, and may have metabolic syndrome, exercise and behavioural strategies can minimise and reverse risk factors when they are in their early stages,” Dr Aguiar adds.
Blood pressure is another crucial metric that benefits from increased physical activity. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure are both impacted positively by movement. “Exercise is already well-known to reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure; that’s called post-exercise hypotension,” Dr Aguiar says. “Within as little as 15 or 20 minutes post-exercise, you can see a decrease in blood pressure from one bout of walking, for example.”
He adds, “Just going out for a walk at a brisk pace, faster than you would usually, will drop your blood pressure down for up to about 24 hours post-exercise.”
That’s not all — this kind of moderate activity can also help control blood sugar levels for nearly two days. “A quick trot is also capable of dropping your blood glucose levels for up to 48 hours,” Dr Aguiar notes.
Metabolic syndrome involves five key risk factors, and according to Dr Aguiar, “Each of those metabolic syndrome five risk factors, on a small timescale of hours to days, can benefit from going out for a brisk walk, a slow jog, or something like that. By consistently meeting physical activity guidelines, all five risk factors will improve over time too.”
So how can someone increase their activity levels in a sustainable way? Dr Aguiar points to the World Health Organisation’s physical activity recommendations as a helpful reference point. These guidelines suggest that all movement adds up and that adults should aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity, 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity, or some mix of both each week.
“Some people might choose to get most of their activity on the weekend, and some people might choose to break their activity up into smaller periods throughout the day,” Dr Aguiar says.
Importantly, the WHO now includes “incidental movement” as part of overall activity, validating even the small actions you do during the day as beneficial. “The new WHO messaging says that all movement counts, so if that means walking a little bit more quickly to your car or the train station, just to elevate your heart rate and your metabolic rate a little bit for brief periods you can accumulate throughout the day, those things count in terms of exercise.”
That means you don’t need to rely solely on structured workouts. Everyday activities — like walking to the bathroom at the office or heading to a café — can be beneficial when done with a little more energy. “And they’re incidental. We all walk, to some degree; from your office to the bathroom, or to a local cafe. If you can focus on walking a little bit faster than you normally do, that’s going to be beneficial for a lot of these risk factors, especially the blood glucose and blood pressure side of things.”
All in all, the message is clear: consistency and intention matter more than complexity. You don’t have to commit to lengthy, exhausting sessions. Just moving more, and moving with a little more intensity, can dramatically impact your health over time. Whether it’s a minute of high-energy walking or a few brisk stretches during your daily routine, these simple changes can lead to measurable health improvements.