How & why to exercise as you sit....

Today's Post: Monday, 1-30-2012

Yesterday, Parade Sunday Magazine had an article on exercisers you can use while sitting.

Catherine Price who wrote it lists 4 different exercisers you can use while sitting.

(I’ll come back to those later in this post.)

Too much sitting makes you fatter and increases your risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and mental decline. This is a LARGE effect! Unless you sit less or exercise while sitting it’s a more forceful effect than taking drugs for those things.

Between sedentary transport to work instead of walking, jobs mostly sitting at a computer, and TV or reading or video games evenings and weekends, most people today spend about two or three times too much time sitting for good health!

Watching 14 hours or less a week of TV instead of 28 or more helps. (You burn less calories sleeping than watching TV! And the fattening things you’d be better off not eating or drinking have lots of ads on TV too.)

Exercising during the evening when other people are watching TV or when you used to do so can help.

For some people, using an elliptical trainer or treadmill while watching TV can help. (Many gyms are set up for it.)

Getting regular exercise during the time you aren’t sitting can help. Walking and strength training for your legs are ideal. Even spending time doing housework or gardening while you are standing up can help.

But if you sit an hour a day during your commute, 8 hours a day at work, and watch TV for 3 hours, that’s 12 hours a day of sitting.

The Parade article and something I’ve been adding to my own fat loss progress report recently are a badly needed and I think doable solution to this.

If you only exercise while sitting half the hours at work and half the hours you sit at home, that’s 42 hours a week! Even if you only exercised hard enough to burn 50 calories an hour, that’s 2100 calories a week.

Both for keeping good health and for avoiding getting fat or getting rid of it, the data is in that 2100 calories or more of exercise a week begins to be at the ideal range. And, that’s time you actually have available now if you can exercise as you sit.

So, far, the state of the art is not very good.

The exerciser needs to be smooth enough in operation and just easy enough to do that between those two, you can do the exercise on it while you sit without taking your attention away from you are doing otherwise.

Since that’s most important at work and most people sit the most at work, that makes this extremely important.

None of the four exercisers in the Parade article will do the job for most people at their work as far as I know. Though one might.

The one that slides around is too distracting, doesn’t give you much exercise, and could cause you to fall and either be hurt or mess up work you’ve spent hours on doing when you put out your hand to stop your fall.

The foot exerciser is too much work to do by the hour though it would go underneath most desks.

The bicycle motion one with just a stand, something that turns, and pedals might work but won’t fit under most desks. The article said it was available for $150 at magnetrainer.com . (Note that URL has only one T.) If its size matches you and it operates smoothly enough, you might be able to use that one a home while reading or watching TV.

The similar exerciser that bills itself as an elliptical trainer is also available for $150 at staminaproducts.com . The author says it might work at some desks in a recumbent bicycle style.

That might be true if the foot strokes to operate it can be short enough strokes.

Those two very well might work at home if they are smooth enough in operation.

But for either at home or at work use, you’d want to have a very low hassle money back guarantee to buy online Or it would make sense to have them in a chain sporting goods store, such as Big 5, where you could try out a demo model and check out the clearances and sizes and smoothness of operation.

One or both of those might work at home. They would cost way less than a full scale elliptical trainer or treadmill. The key would be some way to test how smooth they run for you without buying first.

The second one might work for people at their work. But potential buyers would also need to be able to try it at work to be sure -- or want it for home use if it didn’t work at their job.

This is an area I’ve been thinking about for several months.

During that time, I’ve been ending my monthly, personal, fat loss progress report with this:

“Eventually I’ll also need to get a specialized minibike or other seated leg exerciser I can use while seated at my desk and another I can use while reading at home or at my home computer.

They don’t yet make those that I know of but most people today need them. Given the health harm of sitting too much and how many people do that, these minibikes or other seated exerciser for your legs and chairs that match them well are coming soon I think.

Walking burns about 300 calories an hour. (200 if you are skinny and walk slowly to over 500 if you walk really fast or walk somewhat fast but are much heavier.)

Using a seated minibike or other seated exerciser that you use much less effort on but keep moving slowly most of the time you sit can easily burn 50 calories an hour.

Then, if like many people today you sit for 6 hours a day, you could easily add an extra 2100 calories a week by using a seated minibike exerciser most of the time you sit at home or at work. That would help people lose about 2 and a half pounds a month for a few months once they got into the habit of always using one.

If I’d used one of the seated minibikes since I began my current fatloss plan, I’d still need to add the extra muscle to be at my goal weight. But I’d be trying to add muscle weight to get back to my goal weight! That’s because I’d be 10 to 15 pounds less fat.)

I’ve also had an idea for awhile. Before sewing machines had electric power, they had an under the work area treadle that was designed to be effective but avoid distracting the person sewing from doing their sewing.

It may be possible to find an antique sewing machine and find a manufacturer to make a design of that treadle mechanism that would do the same for people working at a desk.

It’s proven to do the job needed in actual use!)”

** If you’ve used either the MagneTrainer Mini-exercise bike or Stamina’s E1000 Elliptical Trainer OR you’ve found something else in that price range that you have used and would like to do so, please comment here!