Have a desk job? Like to watch “Dancing With the Stars” or “CSI” every night? Does your sofa have a permanent imprint of your butt in it? Then stand up while you read this, because I’m talking to you.
I’ve told you before how too much time on your rear can boost your risk of disease and an early death, and the latest word out of Australia shows just how quickly it can happen to you.
All it takes is an office job and a little too much TV time, because a look at data on 222,000 Australians 45 years old and up finds that people who sit for 11 hours a day or more have a 45 percent higher risk of death over three years.
Don’t sit quite that much? Don’t get comfy in your sofa yet — because keeping your meat in that or any other seat for between 8 and 11 hours a day will boost your risk of death by 15 percent.
In other words, keep your butt in a seat long enough… and your next position won’t be sitting.
It’ll be lying down — in a coffin.
Don’t count on a little time on a treadmill each day to keep the mortician at bay — daily exercisers had the same exact death risk if they spent the rest of the day sitting.
So don’t join a gym, buy an exercise bike or take up a risky sport (even running can do more harm than good). Just get up out of your chair and get moving here and there throughout each day.
Originally published HERE
Sitting your way to obesity
Forget adjustable heights — office chairs should have adjustable seats, so they can grow right along with the butts of the workers who sit in them all day.
And if your job is performed in an office chair, you can bet your own butt is getting beefier with each sedentary day.
Now, a new study shows just what our jobs have done to our overall activity levels — and we’re not sitting pretty.
Back when Americans were choosing between Nixon and Kennedy, 50 percent of us had jobs that involved at least moderate physical activity.
Today, researchers say just 20 percent of all jobs involve even that light movement.
End result: Americans burn 140 calories a day less than we did 50 years ago — and you don’t need a medical degree to figure out what happens when people consume more and burn less.
But then this study flies off the rails, because the researchers wrote in PLoS One that a difference of only 100 fewer calories burned per day — or 100 extra calories going in — is enough to explain away the obesity epidemic.
Give me a break!
Weight loss and good health isn’t about balancing calories in with calories burned — it’s a bout the quality of those calories going in.
If your calories are supersized, double-stuffed and served in a bread bowl — with a bucket of diet soda, just 1 calorie, of course — then 20 minutes a day on a treadmill won’t save your waistline.
And eating 100 fewer of those calories won’t save your life.
Here’s the real deal: If you have an office job, it IS killing you. They’re right about that.
Don’t waste your time with exercise — just be sure to get up out of that seat and move throughout the day.
And don’t waste your time with calorie counting — if you stick to a diet rich in healthy animals fats, your body will tell you when to stop eating.
It’s called “feeling full.”
It might be an alien sensation at first, after years of unsatisfying, hunger-inducing carb-loaded meals — but that’s the feeling that will save your life… and keep your butt from needing a bigger seat.
Originally published HERE
