Is Sitting the New Smoking?
I was in constant motion as a child—a kinetic ball of energy bouncing through life—driving onlookers a bit crazy. I can clearly recall, back when I was a preteen, my aunt remarking under her breath to my mother, “Look, Eleanor, Lisa is finally sitting still!” I’m sure that tranquil moment didn’t last long before I was up and at it again.
Back then, sitting still for long periods of time was the “holy grail” of behavior. Today, however, scientists believe that we, as a nation, might be sitting ourselves to death. Boy, I wish I had that fact to rebut all the criticism and disciplinary action I received because I couldn’t sit still!
Since a sedentary lifestyle is linked to obesity, diabetes, and certain cancers, sitting for too much time during the day actually results in far more deaths in our country than cigarette smoking does. One specific study found that sitting greater than eight hours a day increased the rate of certain cancers by 21-32%, regardless of how much those persons exercised throughout their week. Yes, you heard right—even if you exercise regularly, sitting for greater than eight hours a day has been found to negatively impact your physical health.
These researchers have furthermore defined the difference between exercising too little and sitting too much in terms of calorie burning. Calories are burned two ways. Exercising burns calories when we engage in a sweat producing activity. The other way to burn up food calories is by NEAT, or non-exercise activity thermogenesis. This accounts for the calories we burn while active in “non-sweaty” movement—anything from walking, to making a bed, to fidgeting with a pen.
It’s been demonstrated that prolonged daily sit times significantly diminish our NEAT calorie burn opportunities as well as decreasing our capacity to burn NEAT calories when we do finally get up and start moving. You can effectively “stop smoking your chair” by making your phone calls standing up, having a meeting while taking a walk, making frequent trips to the water cooler, and walking to a colleague’s office rather than messaging them.