Making
Fitness Your Priority
There are a variety of reasons we may be motivated to maintain fitness. We stay fit for our families, our health, athletic
goals, and our looks, among other things.
Despite this obesity has crept up to epidemic status in America. We need to make fitness a priority!
This week I attended a lecture by this title at work. The health system I work for is taking on a
new initiative to encourage fitness among their employees and many other
companies are following suit. Our modern
sedentary lifestyles, both at home and in the workplace, are costly for us and
for our employers. Research has shown
that healthier employees are more cost effective not just by being more
productive but also by requiring less company expenses in terms of health
care. In fact many employers have taken
note and are beginning to implement health insurance discounts for employees
who demonstrate better fitness in terms of health markers such as tobacco use,
blood pressure, blood glucose, cholesterol, and body mass index.
The lecture on 'Making Fitness Your Priority' wasn’t just a plug for joining
the company
wellness center, it sought to raise
awareness of how sedentary many of us are and encouraged making time for
physical activity throughout the day instead of just 30 minutes throughout the
day before or after work. According to Genevieve
Healy, Ph.D., a research fellow at the Cancer Prevention Research Centre of the
University of Queensland in Australia, “We've become so sedentary that 30
minutes a day at the gym may not do enough to counteract the detrimental
effects of 8, 9, or 10 hours of sitting”.
Could this be the reason so many people still struggle with weight,
blood sugar, and cholesterol woes despite keeping consistent workout routines?
In a recent study, Healy and her colleagues found that regardless of how much
moderate to vigorous exercise participants did, those who took more breaks from
sitting throughout the day had slimmer waists, lower body mass indexes, and
healthier blood fat and blood sugar levels than those who sat the most.
We’re
all aware that increasingly sedentary lifestyles have become a problem and working
as a DPT I’ve seen first hand how a sedentary lifestyle can negatively impact
one’s health, but now we’re finally compiling research to show just how
detrimental prolonged sitting can be.
Doctors
at the Mayo Clinic are calling this phenomenon "sitting disease" and liken current
research into the ill effects of inactivity to the discovery of negative side
effects from smoking. "Our bodies have evolved over
millions of years to do one thing: move," says James Levine,M.D., Ph.D.,
of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and author of Move a Little,
Lose a Lot. "As human beings, we evolved to stand upright. For
thousands of generations, our environment demanded nearly constant physical
activity." But thanks to technological advances, the internet, and an
increasingly longer work week, that environment has disappeared.
A Vanderbilt
University study of 6,300 people published in the American Journal of Epidemiology estimated that the average
American spends 55% of waking time in sedentary behaviors such as sitting. That is 7.7 hours per day spent in seated
commute, seated work, and seated homelife!!
So chances are, you're reading this
article sitting down. And if you're like most computer users, you've been in
your chair for a while. PLEASE STAND UP!
Simply
by standing, you burn three times as many calories as you do sitting! Muscle
contractions, including the ones required for standing, trigger important
processes related to the breakdown of fats and sugars.
When you sit for an extended period
of time, your body starts to shut down at the metabolic level. When muscles (especially
the big ones meant for movement, i.e. quads and gluts) are immobile, your
circulation slows, you burn fewer calories, and the key fat-burning enzymes
responsible for breaking down triglycerides simply start switching off. Sit for a full day and those fat burners
plummet by 50%!
And that’s not all. The less you move, the less blood sugar your body uses. Research shows that for every two hours spent
sitting, your chance of contracting diabetes goes up by 7%!. Your risk for
heart disease goes up, too, because enzymes that keep blood fats in check are
inactive. You're also more prone to depression due to less blood flow and consequently
fewer feel-good hormones like endorphins circulating to your brain.
Sitting too much is also terrible for your posture and spine health. When you sit for a prolonged period your hip
flexors and hamstrings tighten and your core musculature becomes stiff and
weak. It’s no wonder that the incidence
of chronic low back pain has increased threefold since the 1990s!
So if exercise alone isn't the
solution, what is? According to research
from Dr. Levine and the Mayo Clinic the answer may be incorporating more
non-exercise daily activity in addition to regular exercise aka ramping up your
NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis).
NEAT is the energy that you burn doing everything but exercise (folding
laundry, tapping your toes, and simply standing up). In the Mayo Clinic’s study on NEAT, motion
sensors were used to track every single step and fidget of 20 people who
weren't regular exercisers (half of them were obese; half were not) and after 10
days, they found that the lean participants moved an average of 150 minutes
more per day than the overweight people did (enough to burn 350 calories or one
cheeseburger). Additionally, Dr. Levine states that "NEAT activity can
improve blood flow and increase the amount of serotonin available to the brain,
so that your thinking becomes sharper and you'll be less likely to feel
depressed."
Here are 10
ways to move more during your day:
1.
Walk faster. If there’s
just one change you can make to get more fitness out of your days, try to pick
up the pace each and every time you walk, whether it’s heading down a hallway,
getting to your car, or enjoying nature. Walking at a faster pace burns more
calories (nearly 100 more calories per hour), strengthens leg muscles, is great
for your heart and lungs, and improves your attitude.
2. Take
the stairs. You’ve heard that one a million
times, but consider this: taking the
stairs can burn 5x as many calories as riding the elevator. In fact, climbing stairs for two minutes,
five days a week provides the same calorie burn as a 36-minute walk. Consider
setting yourself a quota of say, 60 stairs per day; a typical staircase has 10
steps, so that’s six flights. Try going up or down a flight to use the rest
rooms on another floor.
3. Park on the perimeter. You’ve been hearing this one for years, too, but you might
be surprised to learn how much exercise you get from leaving your car at the
far edge of the parking lot. For example, if you park in the empty spot closest
to a store entrance, you’ll walk 25-50 feet to the front door but parking at
the far edge of the lot could mean walking 200-300 feet or more. And if you
carry your shopping bags instead of using the cart you’ll build some more
muscle along the way too.
4. Go public.
Take public transportation more often. Riding
the bus or train to work or other activities requires you to walk more, and the
extra movement can have an impressive impact. Commuters in Charlotte, NC, who
gave up driving and started taking a new light-rail system, lost more than six
pounds in 18 months.
5.
Rearrange the office. The
suggestion of installing treadmills at every workstation may not be a reality
at your work, but there are a lot of other things you can do. Move trash cans out of cubicles to make
people walk to throw out garbage. Relocate water coolers by windows, where
people will want to congregate. Get
face-to-face; instead of e-mailing or calling colleagues, walk to their
part of the building for some face time when you need to ask a question or
solve a work issue. When you do talk on
the telephone, stand up and if possible, walk or pace. Consider trading your
desk chair for a large stability ball. Have walking meetings; skip the conference
room, slip on some comfortable walking shoes, grab a small notepad and pen or a
voice recorder, and invite colleagues for a stroll.
6. Add 15
minutes of walking to your lunch menu.
Whether at work or at home, the typical lunch break lasts 30 to 60 minutes, but
eating usually takes just 10 minutes. Spend your extra time walking, not
sitting.
7. Get your groove on. Dance around while straightening up your
house, washing dishes, or brushing your
teeth. Dancing is both joyful and healthy; you don’t need a dance floor,
special occasion, or even a partner to do it :o)
8. Limit TV time to 2 hours per day. In a study among
women, the risk for metabolic syndrome (a combination of health woes including
high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high blood sugar) shoots up 26% for
every hour per day they spend watching the tube.
9.
Turn TV time into a workout. Instead of sprawling out on the couch, try
doing a few simple stretches or exercises during tube time. Take it a step further
and use commercial breaks during as a chance to rise off the sofa and spend
commercial time doing crunches or jumping jacks.
10. Spend an hour per week outdoors, preferably much more. There’s a direct correlation between
fitness levels and the amount of time you spend outdoors versus indoors. People
who spend more time outside are more energized, upbeat, and fit. What to do
outside? Pull weeds, walk the dog, practice your golf or tennis swing, mulch
your flower beds, bird watch, visit a neighbor.
Think of your body as a computer… As
long as you're moving the mouse and tapping the keys, all systems are go; but
let it idle for a few minutes, and the machine goes into power-conservation
mode. Your body is meant to be active, so when you sit and do nothing for too
long, it shuts down and burns less energy. Getting consistent activity
throughout the day keeps your metabolism in high gear. Fidgeting, standing, and
puttering may even keep you off medications and out of the doctor's office! Try
to aim for 10 minutes of NEAT each hour.
