Don’t Skip Your Workouts for Too Long

Two weeks of inactivity is about as long as you should go.

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Don’t feel too bad if you miss a day or two of exercise. Just make sure those skip days don’t stretch into skip weeks.

Researchers from the University of Liverpool discovered that it takes about two weeks before the healthy start becoming noticeably less healthy. The study looked at a small group of active adults and told them to become much less active—as in, find ways to reduce the number of steps they took in a day by about 80 percent. After about two weeks, researchers noticed the group had gained weight and lost muscle mass, which isn’t too surprising, but they did notice some smaller change, like a decrease in insulin sensitivity that could lead to an increased risk of diabetes.

The two-week mark isn’t a magic number where your body suddenly revolts on you, but the researches say this serves as a good starting point to look closely at the relationship between prolonged inactivity and long-term health.