New research published recently shows that sitting for prolonged periods of time can’t be undone by an active lifestyle and exercise. In fact, “women and men who both sat more and were less physically active were 94 percent and 48 percent more likely, respectively, to die compared with those who reported sitting the least and being most active.”
That’s bad news for most of us, because sitting is what we do. We sit at work, sit in the car, sit at dinner, sit and gab on the phone, and sit on the couch. As prudence did on her potty, we sit and sit and sit and sit and sit and sit and sit (with a far less applauded outcome).
That’s also bad news for employee wellness. It means companies need to change their culture so that bursts of movement become the norm.
Since toting the Philips DirectLife monitor in my pocket and participating in get up and move (more on both later), I’ve been hyper conscious of my activity level. Wearing the monitor and completing friendly challenges gets me up and doing jumping jacks, pacing during phone calls, and creating reasons to run up and down the stairs.
Knowing that sitting can literally be the death of you, I want to hear from you:
- How will you get up and move?
- How will you bring movement into your employees’ daily work
An afterthought: Other research finds that we can be bored to death. Can we kill two birds with one stone?
This article was originally published on Fran Melmed’s Free Range Communication blog.