Have you heard? For each additional hour a day spent sitting, your risk of becoming physically disabled increases by about 50 percent — no matter how much exercise you get. *
Think about it for a moment — how long have you been sitting (at a desk, for a meal, in a car) today alone? Now multiply that by five. Bet it’s more than 23 hours.
If you thought going to the gym or regular exercise was keeping you healthy, think again. New studies indicate what may be far more important is how many hours a day you sit – in fact, men who reported more than 23 hours a week of sedentary activity had a 64 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease than those who reported less than 11 hours a week of sedentary activity. And many of these men routinely exercised.**
But there is hope: people who regularly break up their sedentary time with movement as small as taking one step had healthier waist circumference, body mass index (BMI), and triglycerides than people who didn’t take breaks during long periods of sitting. That’s what Australian researchers found in a 2008 study.
The key is to identify what small change you can make in your workday:
My new resolve is to stand when I am on the phone.
Since I started implementing this change, I’ve noticed three things:
- Sitting at a desk is a hard habit to break; the sticky note on my handset is imperative as a reminder (see photo).
- Standing makes me sound more confident when I make calls – very useful if you are making an offer.
- Standing has also made me realize how often I use my computer when I am on the phone (to add an appointment to my calendar, see a web page I want as a reference or do a web search). To really make standing an option, I need an elevated laptop stand.
I’m commited to making this work, so I searched for laptop stand options – you can see pictures and descriptions on my Working Simply Pinterest Board.
What do you do to keep moving at work? Leave a comment below.
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