As discussed in an earlier post about being a couch potato, sitting for one added hour each day increases risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity regardless of how much you exercise.

The average adult spends up to 90 percent of their waking hours doing one of the most inactive things you can do – sitting. Standing still, chewing gum or fidgeting all burn more calories than simply sitting and walking would be considered really hard work in comparison! As research shows, the ill effects of sitting go beyond a lack of caloric expenditure.

University of Missouri physiologists found that sitting results in metabolic changes at the cellular level. Levels of an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase, which is involved in how the body breaks down fat, drop after prolonged periods of inactivity. Low levels of lipoprotein lipase have been linked to heart disease and other health issues because of it’s role in fat metabolism.

The health effects of a sedentary lifestyle (sedentary comes from the Latin word meaning to sit) are well known and it’s time for the solutions to become common knowledge too. Combating “sitting syndrome” can be as simple as get up to from your desk every so often, just to give your derriere a break. To test the effectiveness of this simple remedy, researchers observed people who sit for many hours. They found that those who took frequent short breaks to stand up, stretch, or walk down the corridor had slimmer waists than their peers who didn’t uninterrupted their sitting with periodic activity.

With each passing year, we burn fewer calories as our body ages and metabolism slows. Most of us fail to compensate for this effect by eating less food, but a little more time spent doing anything but sitting could make up for that. Find out more about about how non-sitting, non-exercise activities can translate into weight loss and get off your chair!