LOSE weight in a way that’s a guaranteed, costs nothing, requires virtually no effort and can be done almost anywhere. How good does that sound? It’s called standing up. Do you know that if you stand up for five minutes every half hour of an eight-hour working day you’ll burn about 2,500 calories a month? Burning off energy means you lose weight – plus a host of other health benefits.
There’s new research which shows that more than two thirds of us are sedentary for 20 hours every day. The definition of sedentary is simple: Sitting or lying down and expending very little energy. Sound familiar? How can we ever hope to lose weight!
There’s all sorts of things you can do to make standing up a useful habit to get into.
• Wash up at the sink instead of loading up the dishwasher.
• Stand on the train or on the bus (some of us have no choice!)
• Make phone calls standing up instead of sitting.
• Put your computer on the ironing board to create a standing desk.
That last tip, incidentally, is taken from a website called NotSitting.com!
I came across some fascinating research from the world-renowned Mayo Clinic in the U.S. National Library of Medicine. It shows that 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a week can help prevent and manage many chronic conditions including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity and some cancers.
The research goes into a lot of technical detail about how spending more time sitting is linked to reduced lipoprotein activity and less glucose-stimulated insulin secretion
What it all means in a nutshell is this: We need to stimulate our muscles at regular intervals to help give our hormones a boost and keep us healthy and make us lose weight.
The latest surveys in America reveal that on average adults spend 70 per cent of their waking time sitting down – at work, at home, in front of the TV, in the car.
The TV is a real killer, of course. In America, the average person spends just over four hours day sitting in front of the box. That’s no way to lose weight.
The odd thing is that we parents are always telling our children to get off the settee and go out and play. We instinctively know it’s good for them, probably because our parents drummed it into us and their parents drummed it into them.
It’s time we started taking notice of our own advice. If not, the day could come when every chair has to carry a Government health warning: Sitting Kills.
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[NOTE: Download Sandra’s free ebook 7 Ways Your Brain Can Help You Lose Weight for more information and simple, proven ways you can fight back.]
