Sitting Less – The Missing Ingredient to Your Work Out Routine
How much you sit each days is a more important determinant of your health than working out a few times per week. Even if you exercise regularly, you may still endanger your health simply by sitting too much. One of the missing ingredients of a good work out routine is the failure to take stock of how much non-movement you do throughout each day.
We exercise because we’re trying to replicate what our ancestors did. Our ancestors didn’t have to exercise because they moved all day long, and research shows THIS is absolutely key for health. In fact, studies show that engaging in consistent exercise does not counteract the adverse cardiovascular and metabolic effects of prolonged sitting.
So non-exercise movement is now recognized as being the foundation for optimal health — even more so than exercising for an hour a few times a week. Ideally, you’d do them both, but if you’re currently not in a regular exercise routine, the place to start is by sitting less.
This is where the fitness tracker can come in handy. Using a tracker like Fitbit we recommend aiming to get at least 7,000 to 10,000 steps each day, and limit sitting to three hours or less. Remember that while a healthy diet accounts for about 80 percent of the benefits you reap from a healthy lifestyle, exercise is the leverage that allows all of those benefits to be maximized. You simply cannot be healthy without regular physical movement — and this includes both non-exercise movement throughout the day, and a more vigorous exercise regimen.