Health: Get moving! Find out why your time spent “sitting” might be undoing your good work!

Get that beautiful body moving!  No, we aren’t talking about your morning PT session or your scheduled pilates class (although they have their own very important benefits) we are talking about how much you move OUTSIDE of your structured exercise regime… and if you really think about it – some days it might not be much.  We live in an increasingly sedentary world and the wonders of modern technology and the resulting convenience, have us sitting down a lot – When you think about our daily routine, once we get up in the morning, we: sit down to have breakfast, sit down in the car on the way to work, sit down at work all day, drive home, eat dinner sitting down, and then sit on the couch to watch tv or surf the internet. That’s a lot of sitting down.

While the grandiose statement that “Sitting is the new smoking” might have you feeling a little sceptical, sitting for too long it has been linked to increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity and even depression.  “We’ve made sitting into an art form,” says James Levine, M.D., Ph.D., director of Obesity Solutions at Mayo Clinic in Arizona and Arizona State University. “Excess sitting is now linked with 35 diseases and conditions, including obesity, hypertension, back pain, cancer, cardiovascular disease and depression,” he says. “Governments such as Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom have identified sedentary life as a catastrophe.”

But… this doesn’t apply to you right, as you do your one hour of exercise every day/ second day/ third day?  Wrong! Unfortunately, outside of structured exercise, regular exercisers sit just as much as non-exercisers and can face the same health risks as their completely inactive counterparts (regardless of how often or how hard they work out)!  Yikes…. That’s not what we wanted to hear.

But, it makes sense, our bodies were made to move, and move often.  Sitting for extended periods of time causes your body to shut down on a metabolic level.  When your circulation slows you use less blood sugar and burn less fat – increasing your risk of heart disease and diabetes. Moving muscles pump fresh blood and oxygen throughout the body, including the brain and trigger the release of all sorts of brain- and mood-enhancing chemicals. When we are sedentary for a long time, everything slows, including brain function.

Feeling a little uncomfortable with that info?  Good!  But what if your job requires you to be seated at a desk all day – is all lost??  NO!  There are a few simple things that you should incorporate into your day to mitigate the effects of your extended period of sitting.

• Sit on something wobbly such as an exercise ball or even a backless stool to force your core muscles to work. Sit up straight and keep your feet flat on the floor in front of you so they support about a quarter of your weight.
• Walking during breaks in active work or when you’re watching TV. Even a snail-like pace of 1 mph would burn twice the calories of sitting, and more vigorous exercise (like squatting up and down, lunges, star jumps etc) would be even better.
• Alternating between sitting and standing at your work station/ on the couch. If you can’t do that, stand up every half hour or so and walk the hallways.
• Walk into your colleague’s office instead of firing of an email or calling them.
• Take all of your phone calls standing up! This one surely doesn’t need explanation.
• Stretch the hip flexors for three minutes per side once a day.
• At the end of the day, try some yoga poses. Position yourself on your hands and knees, alternate between exaggerating the curve of your spine to then creating a concave shape through the belly and pull belly button to the sky – the Cow and the Cat poses.  These are excellent to maintain mobility and improve extension and flexion in your back.

The answer can be as simple as standing up, taking active breaks from sitting and MOVING as much as possible the rest of the time!  Get up off your butt. Keep moving.  Everyday. Being more active throughout your entire day with regular movement has enormous health benefits.

So, keep up the physical training, but it’s also time to focus on what you are doing the rest of the day, as this seems to matter just as much when it comes to your health.   Join the SSH ‘movement’ against inactivity and get moving, girls!!  FitFeb kicks off today – so why not join us?  What is FitFeb?  Well, glad that you asked….. Fit Feb is a commitment to exercise/and or move for a minimum of 20 minutes, every day for the month of February (come on it IS the shortest month of the year!).  Twenty minutes out of your day, doesn’t seem like much and it isn’t – if the 20 becomes 30 or 40 mins throughout that day, even better – but let’s start small (as SOMETHING is better than NOTHING, right?) and keep it up for the full 28 days!

Tag us on #sshfitfeb and show us how you get your move on.  We’ll be joining you on the challenge….

Anna & Em xo

Like this?  This is a topic that we feel SO passionate about – so there is more of this to come.  Please leave us some feedback if you want more, or if you have any other topics you want us to explore.