Sitting Kills, So Get Up

Posted by Healthy Bitch Daily 

Sitting down reading this?

Girl, you need to get up off yo ass.

Recent studies show a frightening fact—one that makes me rethink chairs altogether: Sitting for too long every day is killing you. This is not an exaggeration.

Physical inactivity is one of the four common causes of chronic disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which can lead to death. It’s up there on the list with poor eating habits and alcoholism.

Yeah, that serious.

Scary Studies

According to Women’s Health magazine, an in-depth Canadian study that involved 17,000 people who had either sedentary and physical lifestyles showed some shocking results. The more time you spend sitting each day, the more likely it is that you will succumb to an early death. Another recent study showed that adults who stood and walked for several hours a day had significantly lower insulin and triglyceride levels than people who did crazy cardio for an hour
at the gym. Translation? It may not be so much about getting your burn on, but getting off your butt more in general.

Are you surprised that couch potatoing and being a plain old lazy terd can lead to health risks?

Me neither.

But I was shocked to learn something that has been right under my nose for a while: If you have a desk job (like me), then you may have increased risks for a host of bad shit. In the lineup is heart disease, diabetes, and—here it comes—weight gain. And it doesn't take a brain child to know that all of those can lead to premature death.

Solution Time

For some of these problems, there is a solution.

Walk it off. If you get your booty up and out of your chair to take a short walk around the office enough times a day (say, every 30 minutes) then you can burn a sufficient amount of calories to keep extra pounds from stacking up. However, it's nearly impossible to reverse the damage that causes heart disease, so moving around during the work day is super-duper important.

Exercise, silly. Continuous, moderate exercise helps with your blood sugar levels, which then lowers your risk for diabetes.

Lighten your mood. Feeling depressed at your desk? Well, it may be more than that stack of never-ending work: All that inactivity is also messing with your blood flow, which can lead to depression (those feel-good hormones aren’t circulating to your brain properly, y’all).

Fix your posture. You can also blame those lower back problems on your sedentary work style. According to Douglas Lentz, a certified specialist and director for fitness and wellness for Summit Health, chronic lower back pain among women has increased three-fold since the ‘90s. "When you sit all day, your hip flexors and hamstrings shorten and tighten, while the muscles that support your spine become weak and stiff," he says.

So, what else can we do about this, besides pulling a Jimmy Kimmel and turning our desks into treadmills? (which, by the way, would be totally sweet!)

I found an awesome list of ‘swaps’ you can do everyday, along with the calories they burn per hour:

1. Sitting at your desk: 83 calories vs. standing at your desk: 115 calories per hour

2. Taking the elevator: 128 calories vs. taking the stairs: 509 calories (depending on how many flights you're going up, obvi)

3. Sitting while on the phone: 102 calories vs. pacing while talking: 147 calories

4. E-mailing a co-worker: 96 calories vs. walking to her office: 128 calories

For all you healthy bitches out there who want to go the extra mile, which I highly suggest you do, I’ve included a link to a five-minute video from Runner’s
World that shows great exercises and stretches you can do right at your desk.

Image courtesy of akeeris / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How do you break up a sitting day? Let us know in the comments below.Barbara Styles, Guest BloggerWhile she was born and raised in the Valley of the Sun (Phoenix, AZ), Barbara is one of the palest people you will ever meet. An avid Disney fan, she is a sensitive Pisces who loves drifting through her days reading horror novels and working with elementary school kids in a Literacy Lab.  Cooking is more than just a hobby, she has an expensive Certificate in Patisserie and Baking from Le Cordon Bleu and works at Sweet Painted Cakes. When she's not off working or visiting family, she is at home with her two dogs and two cats and her fiance Patrick, whom, without, she'd be a crazy cat lady