Sitting too much can cause health problems....
Today's Post: Friday, 1-14-2011
Sitting too much can cause health problems. This was all over the health news this week in different ways.
One article had research showing that people who sit too much without breaks were at greater risk of high CRP inflammation and heart disease.
Another had information that the more people walk each week the less their risk of getting insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. They also tended to weigh less.
(A related study earlier this year found that people who walk 6 miles a week or more had far less brain shrinkage as they got older than people who walked far less than that each week.)
Another had the information that people living in the United States from Asia often had insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes even when they were not fat. And, in that article, it had a clear link to sitting too much. It said that people from Asia were less active than other ethnic groups. Despite not being fat, they actually often had MORE visceral fat internally which is a marker of not getting enough exercise or activity each week.
There is a positive in this because people from Asia are often studying or doing knowledge work and wind up being better educated and better paid. But it does show that sitting too much even for positive reasons can cause health problems.
And, there is another common problem that results in people sitting too much and often getting fat too when people are away from work.
A majority of Americans watch more than 15 hours a week of TV. But every hour of TV watching time over about 10 tends to cause the health problems from sitting too much and is very highly correlated with getting fat.
Why is that?
There are several reasons.
More sitting and less activity means worse health and adding more than 10 hours of sitting away from work to the sitting people during commuting and work is NOT a good idea.
Second, not only are people sitting while watching TV, they are sitting still enough that they are burning fewer calories an hour than they would be if they were sleeping!
Third, if they watch commercial TV, they are exposed to well made ads by the truckload for the bad for you and fattening commercial desserts, snacks, fast food, and soft drinks that are a major reason people are now so fat.
Fourth, if they eat while watching TV, it becomes mechanical and continuous and usually continues well past when they are no longer hungry because their attention is pre-empted by what they are watching on TV.
Fifth, since they are not at work, the time they are spending watching TV uses up much of the time they could have been exercising or doing an active activity they enjoy.
There are three solutions to this problem of sitting too much.
1. Have a way to program in more short breaks from sitting while you are at work.
This one is tough. You have to gradually create your own solution. (You won’t do it often enough or keep doing it unless it fits you and your work environment.)
But here are two ideas that I’ve found that work for me.
a) I became unable to drink coffee and then found out that I liked Earl Grey tea and green tea is good for you. So I now have four cups a day of Earl Grey tea and two cups of green tea at work on each full work day. That way I build in the times I get up to fix these cups of tea and automatically build in several resulting times a day when I have to visit the bathroom from all that extra water intake. That gets me out of my chair about 12 times a day when without it, I’d get up far less.
b) I read some previous research suggesting that other kinds of sitting breaks would be good to do. I even posted about it. But I found I barely got started before I stopped doing it.
That’s changed.
I saw a Doctor Oz email that it is a good idea to do 15 squats to a chair where your thighs are about parallel to the ground a few times a day at work can be a good idea. So, on Tuesday and Thursday, the days I do leg exercises at home, I do that five times one time each of the times I drink a cup of tea except for the very first one. And, I do a gripping exercise with no weight but 98 times, five times a day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
I do them and have kept doing them. There are two reasons for that,
I link them to getting the cups of tea I was already getting regularly.
AND, I made a very informal and quick to use log to mark down each time each day that I do those. That way if I forget one time, I can look at that log and know to do an extra one the next time. This log is a very important key to why I’ve been able to keep doing them. I did NOT do this in my efforts before that I stopped doing.
(I did this to help shrink my belly fat in part. But this new research suggests I’m also protecting my health when I do it.)
2. Begin to do a regular program with both moderate activity such as walking or doing Tai Chi and vigorous exercise such as strength training or interval cardio each week. Do it consistently and keep an accurate if brief record so you can keep track of what you are actually doing. Then gradually find ways to increase it over time. Then keep doing the ones that work.
This is not easy. But even a couple of 15 minute walks each week or three 6 minute sessions of something called Tabata intervals each week will be far better than nothing. Then if you can add just two 20 minute strength training sessions to those two, you can begin to be quite effective with minimal time used.
(Tabata intervals are where you do a minute of moderate activity for a warm up; and then build up to 8 30 second intervals back to back, which takes 4 minutes total; and then do a one minute cool down of moderate activity. Each 30 second interval starts with 20 seconds of near maximum speed and intensity and then 10 seconds of rest. This is very similar to Dr Al Sears PACE program. And, Tabata intervals are far from the only way to do interval cardio. But they have been proven to work to dramatically increase fitness. And, doing a 6 minute session every other day for just three days a week is much easier to schedule in than walking for an hour or running for 20 minutes once a day.)
Where can you find the time for this?
3. One way is by watching less hours of TV! Trimming back TV watching to 10 hours a week or less most weeks, is the third way to solve this problem.
If in addition, you stop buying and consuming the bad for you and fattening things advertised on TV and eat real foods instead & you have been consuming these, you can save a lot of money and be a lot less fat.
In addition, if you eat before or after watching TV instead of during it, you won’t mindlessly eat calories you were not actually hungry for. You’ll save money and be less fat that way too.
Here are some ideas on watching less TV – ideally cutting back to 10 hours a week or less.
Decide to do it because you now know it’s important.
Simply stop watching the TV that was OK but not great or that you watched out of boredom.
Divide the rest into TV that you want most to watch and TV that you enjoy but you can miss occasionally and TV you like but can easily do without.
Then stop watching the lower half of these shows. Stop the things you can easily do without and only watch the TV you can miss occasionally about half as much or as often.
You can also now use technology to tape those that you enjoy but you can miss occasionally or that you really prefer to watch if they come on at a time that you decided to be active or go somewhere interesting. That way, if you have time later in the week, you can watch them. Sometimes you will find that time for the shows you like most. But you won’t always find that time and will find it less often for the shows you can really do without.
Another way is to get faster to use sources for news and weather than watching them on TV.
See http://www.wunderground.com & http://www.weather.com/ & http://news.yahoo.com/ .
With these sites you can see more exactly what you want to find and see more details and in far less time than watching the news and weather on TV.
I also find that reading the newspaper is faster than watching TV and gets more details I want to see for Sports and business news and local and national news than watching on TV.
In addition, by going online and by reading the newspaper, I can decide when to do it where it myself – where it only happens at certain times on TV. So I get more control of my schedule.
And, I can completely skip the news I have no interest in where I’d be forced to watch it to get to what I do want to see if I watched TV.
Today's Post: Friday, 1-14-2011
Sitting too much can cause health problems. This was all over the health news this week in different ways.
One article had research showing that people who sit too much without breaks were at greater risk of high CRP inflammation and heart disease.
Another had information that the more people walk each week the less their risk of getting insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. They also tended to weigh less.
(A related study earlier this year found that people who walk 6 miles a week or more had far less brain shrinkage as they got older than people who walked far less than that each week.)
Another had the information that people living in the United States from Asia often had insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes even when they were not fat. And, in that article, it had a clear link to sitting too much. It said that people from Asia were less active than other ethnic groups. Despite not being fat, they actually often had MORE visceral fat internally which is a marker of not getting enough exercise or activity each week.
There is a positive in this because people from Asia are often studying or doing knowledge work and wind up being better educated and better paid. But it does show that sitting too much even for positive reasons can cause health problems.
And, there is another common problem that results in people sitting too much and often getting fat too when people are away from work.
A majority of Americans watch more than 15 hours a week of TV. But every hour of TV watching time over about 10 tends to cause the health problems from sitting too much and is very highly correlated with getting fat.
Why is that?
There are several reasons.
More sitting and less activity means worse health and adding more than 10 hours of sitting away from work to the sitting people during commuting and work is NOT a good idea.
Second, not only are people sitting while watching TV, they are sitting still enough that they are burning fewer calories an hour than they would be if they were sleeping!
Third, if they watch commercial TV, they are exposed to well made ads by the truckload for the bad for you and fattening commercial desserts, snacks, fast food, and soft drinks that are a major reason people are now so fat.
Fourth, if they eat while watching TV, it becomes mechanical and continuous and usually continues well past when they are no longer hungry because their attention is pre-empted by what they are watching on TV.
Fifth, since they are not at work, the time they are spending watching TV uses up much of the time they could have been exercising or doing an active activity they enjoy.
There are three solutions to this problem of sitting too much.
1. Have a way to program in more short breaks from sitting while you are at work.
This one is tough. You have to gradually create your own solution. (You won’t do it often enough or keep doing it unless it fits you and your work environment.)
But here are two ideas that I’ve found that work for me.
a) I became unable to drink coffee and then found out that I liked Earl Grey tea and green tea is good for you. So I now have four cups a day of Earl Grey tea and two cups of green tea at work on each full work day. That way I build in the times I get up to fix these cups of tea and automatically build in several resulting times a day when I have to visit the bathroom from all that extra water intake. That gets me out of my chair about 12 times a day when without it, I’d get up far less.
b) I read some previous research suggesting that other kinds of sitting breaks would be good to do. I even posted about it. But I found I barely got started before I stopped doing it.
That’s changed.
I saw a Doctor Oz email that it is a good idea to do 15 squats to a chair where your thighs are about parallel to the ground a few times a day at work can be a good idea. So, on Tuesday and Thursday, the days I do leg exercises at home, I do that five times one time each of the times I drink a cup of tea except for the very first one. And, I do a gripping exercise with no weight but 98 times, five times a day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
I do them and have kept doing them. There are two reasons for that,
I link them to getting the cups of tea I was already getting regularly.
AND, I made a very informal and quick to use log to mark down each time each day that I do those. That way if I forget one time, I can look at that log and know to do an extra one the next time. This log is a very important key to why I’ve been able to keep doing them. I did NOT do this in my efforts before that I stopped doing.
(I did this to help shrink my belly fat in part. But this new research suggests I’m also protecting my health when I do it.)
2. Begin to do a regular program with both moderate activity such as walking or doing Tai Chi and vigorous exercise such as strength training or interval cardio each week. Do it consistently and keep an accurate if brief record so you can keep track of what you are actually doing. Then gradually find ways to increase it over time. Then keep doing the ones that work.
This is not easy. But even a couple of 15 minute walks each week or three 6 minute sessions of something called Tabata intervals each week will be far better than nothing. Then if you can add just two 20 minute strength training sessions to those two, you can begin to be quite effective with minimal time used.
(Tabata intervals are where you do a minute of moderate activity for a warm up; and then build up to 8 30 second intervals back to back, which takes 4 minutes total; and then do a one minute cool down of moderate activity. Each 30 second interval starts with 20 seconds of near maximum speed and intensity and then 10 seconds of rest. This is very similar to Dr Al Sears PACE program. And, Tabata intervals are far from the only way to do interval cardio. But they have been proven to work to dramatically increase fitness. And, doing a 6 minute session every other day for just three days a week is much easier to schedule in than walking for an hour or running for 20 minutes once a day.)
Where can you find the time for this?
3. One way is by watching less hours of TV! Trimming back TV watching to 10 hours a week or less most weeks, is the third way to solve this problem.
If in addition, you stop buying and consuming the bad for you and fattening things advertised on TV and eat real foods instead & you have been consuming these, you can save a lot of money and be a lot less fat.
In addition, if you eat before or after watching TV instead of during it, you won’t mindlessly eat calories you were not actually hungry for. You’ll save money and be less fat that way too.
Here are some ideas on watching less TV – ideally cutting back to 10 hours a week or less.
Decide to do it because you now know it’s important.
Simply stop watching the TV that was OK but not great or that you watched out of boredom.
Divide the rest into TV that you want most to watch and TV that you enjoy but you can miss occasionally and TV you like but can easily do without.
Then stop watching the lower half of these shows. Stop the things you can easily do without and only watch the TV you can miss occasionally about half as much or as often.
You can also now use technology to tape those that you enjoy but you can miss occasionally or that you really prefer to watch if they come on at a time that you decided to be active or go somewhere interesting. That way, if you have time later in the week, you can watch them. Sometimes you will find that time for the shows you like most. But you won’t always find that time and will find it less often for the shows you can really do without.
Another way is to get faster to use sources for news and weather than watching them on TV.
See http://www.wunderground.com & http://www.weather.com/ & http://news.yahoo.com/ .
With these sites you can see more exactly what you want to find and see more details and in far less time than watching the news and weather on TV.
I also find that reading the newspaper is faster than watching TV and gets more details I want to see for Sports and business news and local and national news than watching on TV.
In addition, by going online and by reading the newspaper, I can decide when to do it where it myself – where it only happens at certain times on TV. So I get more control of my schedule.
And, I can completely skip the news I have no interest in where I’d be forced to watch it to get to what I do want to see if I watched TV.
Labels: how to sit less, how to sit less in doable ways, how to watch less TV, PACE program by Dr Al Sears, Sitting too much can cause health problems, Tabata intervals are a time efficient way to get fit
posted by David at 1:27 PM
2 Comments:
Thats a good news... but there are more ways to be fit easily.. I have described those in my blog here:
www.bestdietarticle.info
please visit and help me to modify it by giving your comments and advices.
Fast fat loss from doing many of the things that work slowly well and all at once is likely just fine.
Fast fat loss by cutting back extra on calories on a temporary basis tends to cause fat loss and weight loss. But your body's famine response this triggers almost always makes you extra hungry and you gain it all back!
Post a Comment
<< Home