The structure of our lives – working, driving, sitting to eat, and sitting to relax – can trap us into a sedentary lifestyle. For the typical person, more than half of their day is spent sitting. A normal office worker sits a shocking 15 hours every single day.
This trend has snowballed into the development of metabolic diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular or heart diseases, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.
Most of us are not meeting our recommended 150 minutes of moderate activity in a day.
In this episode I’m exploring
✅ The dangers of sedentary behavior,
✅ Why have we become so sedentary? &
✅ How can you break free from this cycle?
You can learn simple strategies to incorporate movement into your daily routine to make a positive change in your health.
So, if you're ready to take charge of your well-being and kick those sedentary habits to the curb, tune in to this week’s episode of 9 to 5 Wellness.
#sedentary #sedentarylifestyle #fitness #exercise #workout #sitting #movemore #workfromhome #healthlifestyle #officejob #trainhard #deskjob #posture
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🌟 🌟 🌟 If you liked this episode and would like to learn more about wellness training and workshops offered by 9 to 5 Wellness, email us at info@aeshathair.com. You can learn more about our programs at: https://toneandstrengthen.com/workshops-trainings/. 🌟 🌟 🌟
Aesha Tahir is an award-winning author, keynote speaker, corporate trainer, and columnist. She delivers high-energy presentations that challenge audiences to leverage their focus to what matters most at work and in life, their health. Audiences love the practical strategies she shares. She helps the organizations create a culture of wellness by implementing health programs that put organizations’ biggest asset, the employees first.
Aesha earned her Master in Exercise Science from Concordia University. She is a distinguished Toastmasters, a designation held by less than 1% of professional speakers. She engages groups from the moment she steps in front of them and leaves them with empowering tools that they can use for the rest of their lives. She has presented workshops and spoken at organizations such as Salesforce, Coffman Engineers, Pyramid Club, Voyager Media Group, National Libraries, 92NY, and Coaching4Leaders to name a few.
🌟 🌟 🌟. You can learn more about Aesha Tahir at https://www.aeshatahir.com and follow her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aeshatahir/. 🌟 🌟 🌟
Welcome to the nine to five wellness podcast, a show about corporate wellness solutions with innovators and forward thinking leaders who are at the forefront of the workplace wellness movement. I'm your host Ayesha Tahir.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the nine to five wellness podcast. Today I want to tackle a common issue that many of us face kicking our sedentary habits to the curb. The reason I want to talk about this is because I often recommend to my clients to incorporate more movement into their day. I recently made this recommendation to a client and she said When I'm focused on work, I'm on a roll.
New ideas are coming to me like a flash flood. Who has the urge to go out for a walk? I lose my concentration. So she ends up sitting around too much, which has led to high blood pressure. And she is also overweight because of that. So That is the inspiration behind this episode, and that's why I wanted to talk about this because I believe a lot of office workers are in the same position.
Before we get further into this topic, I want to offer you a question. And that question is, I want you to take a second to see how your day looks. Do you find yourself constantly tied to your chair? Scrolling through your devices and maybe you know, even binge watching over physical activity once you are at home.
Do you wonder how you can ever fit in any exercise into your day? If that's the case, then my friend, you've fallen into the trap of a sedentary lifestyle. And you're not alone. As a society, we have constructed a daily pattern of living that makes it almost inevitable that we don't, won't be physically active.
The structure of our lives, working, driving, sitting to eat, and sitting to relax, can trap us into this inactive lifestyle. For a typical person, more than half of their day is spent sitting. And yes, honestly, maybe it even includes me on certain days. I do try to take movement breaks often and periodically move around the house, or if I'm working outside at a site, then I get to move more.
But what's shocking is that a normal office worker sits 15 hours every single day. So for 15 hours a day, you're glued to some kind of a chair.
This trend has snowballed into the development of metabolic diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular or heart diseases, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. A study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health has shown that 18 percent of women who watch approximately three plus hours of TV a day are more likely to suffer from depression.
So, not only impacts our physical health, but also our mental health. This lifestyle is not only costing the individuals their health, it's also costing our economy. Let's take a look. Within the U. S. Our life expectancy in 2012 was just 69 healthy years. Now, the U. S. is tied in with this life expectancy number with countries like Costa Rica that spend far less on their healthcare.
Wondering how much we spend on our healthcare, we are spending over three trillion dollars per year, the highest in the world by far. And, you know, if we are really investing that much into our healthcare system, don't you think people should have a longer healthy life expectancy? Like, it should be greater than 69 years?
Now, preventable chronic diseases or the metabolic diseases that we talked about before, like heart disease and diabetes, are mostly responsible for the health problem in the U. S. The interesting fact that I found is that the vast majority of the U. S. healthcare spending goes towards treatment of conditions which could be prevented with simple measures.
Listen to this. Simple measures such as 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day. Yep, it could be just 30 minutes of brisk walk a day. So, according to Mayo Clinic they conducted a research study. 31 percent of U. S. adults report no leisure time physical activity. whatsoever. That's why
we are in this pickle where we are overweight, we are depressed and a lot of the people are insulin resistant, which means we have type type two diabetes. Our lifestyles have changed over the past several decades. According to American Heart Association, sedentary jobs have increased by 83 percent since 1950.
So it's no wonder that Obesity, diabetes and heart disease have become so common since then. Why have we as a species become sedentary and why are we facing these health problems? Here is why we human beings are creative and imaginative creatures. We devise marvelous adventures , for ourselves and excel at coming up with a wide range of comforts.
Oh, the joys of using them too. We love using our devices, right? We love the convenience that comes with them. And that's not all. Food is more plentiful than ever and easily accessible. So fast food, processed food, and sugar loaded beverages remain a regular part of our diet. Less than a century ago. Human beings lived in hunting and foraging societies for millennia.
Then, these societies were followed by agricultural communities, after which came industrialization in many regions of the world. At this time, right now, we are growing and expanding in this tech era. Just think about that for a moment. I want you to just let that sink in, in a span of a few years, which is Honestly, less than a century.
A whole lot of humanity went from toiling in the fields for hours on end to working in factories and mills for long, arduous hours and then to sitting in front of a screen to work or to be entertained. Average TV, phone, and computer screen time easily exceeds 40 hours per week. It's no wonder obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are so common now.
Our bodies are built to stand upright and move often. So your heart and cardiovascular system, it works more effectively. when you're in an upright position, when you're moving often. Your digestive system also functions more efficiently when you're upright. It is common for people who are bedridden to experience problems with both.
That is how we got here. Now, we are all very smart. As I said before, human beings are smart, imaginative creatures. And we Most of us also are very educated, so everyone knows that being sedentary is bad for your health. It's not the act of sitting itself that is harmful for your health, the repercussions of moving too little.
Research indicates that too much sitting can even offset the health benefits of working out, and we're going to talk about this particular topic in more detail. Later in this podcast and on another podcast too because a lot of times people think okay Well, I hit the gym for an hour and I'm good. Well, that's not the case so I'd like to talk about the top three ways. It's potentially damaging our bodies from head to toe. Let's start at the head.
The more you sit, the thinner the regions of your brain associated with memory tend to be. Human brains need a constant supply of blood and oxygen to function properly. And movement helps circulate a fresh supply to keep the brain performing in peak condition. Remember, I started with the story of my client.
She mentioned that movement breaks would interrupt her focus. It's actually the other way around. Your focus and productivity will improve if you take movement breaks. By sitting for long periods of time, your blood circulation slows down. And And so does your brain function. This can lead to lowered cognition and long term effects for aging brains and increased rates of depression and anxiety, not only from being in a sedentary environment, but the sheer lack of benefits that come from being physically active.
Second, let's take a look at our spine. So the spine, what is its impact on the spine? When you're sitting for such long hours in one position, poor posture is sure to follow. When you're slumping and hunching over, you, you're compressing the spinal discs in your spine. Often, it leads to chronic neck, shoulder, and back pain, which I see a lot of clients come to me with.
And Worse, over time, what I see is the premature degeneration of discs. It also increases the likelihood of getting a herniated disc due to hardening of collagen that supports ligaments and tendons. The way we sit, including the way we shift our weight, Also puts pressure on ischial tuberosity, or the pelvic bone that you sit on or your sits bones.
It's also called your sits bones, which causes pain and in many cases bursitis, hip bursitis. Because spines that become inactive, also become inflexible, they are much more likely to get injured doing minimal tasks. Think about, you know, maybe you're reaching for your coffee mug in the morning and you just pull your back out.
Why did that happen? Because if you have been inactive, your spine and the structures around it, your muscles, tendons, ligaments all have become very inflexible and they would give out very easily.
Third and last, I want to talk about the impact that sedentary lifestyle has on your weight. Moving your muscles helps your body digest the fats and sugars you eat. So if you're spending a lot of time sitting, digestion is not as efficient. And you would retain those fats and sugars as fat in your body, especially fat around your belly area, or Visceral fat.
Visceral fat means it's the fat that is actually layered on around your organs. Sitting means that your muscles are resting. This is particularly true for our abdominal muscles when slumped in a chair. Moving, standing, and even sitting with a straight back can do wonders for engaging your abs when your abs are not active.
It leads to fat accumulation and muscle deterioration, which occurs around the front and sides of the waist. Even if you exercise an hour but you're spending a large amount of time sitting, you are still risking health problems such as metabolic syndrome because you're not metabolizing carbs and fats properly if you're not moving periodically throughout the day.
Even if you exercise an hour a day, but spend a large amount of the time sitting, you are still risking health problems such as metabolic syndrome, because you're not metabolizing carbs and fats properly if you're not moving periodically throughout the day. Now, Metabolic syndrome sounds like such a fancy term, so let me break it down for you.
Metabolic syndrome is a collection of conditions that often occur together and increase your risk of diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. The main components of metabolic syndrome include obesity, high blood pressure, high blood triglycerides, low levels of HDL cholesterol, and insulin resistance.
Metabolic syndrome often turns into obesity, which is a serious public health problem because it is associated with some of the leading causes of death. Okay, so now you're like, you have told me what is wrong with a sedentary lifestyle. What do I do?
How do I mitigate the metabolic syndrome and all the negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle? And I'm going to answer that question right now. In simple terms, the answer is move more often when you fidget or walk or if you're at home and you are, let's say, gardening at home, that energy expenditure is known as the non exercise activity thermogenesis.
In short form, I'd call it NEAT. So we want to increase our NEAT. And how can we do that? Spend time each day doing physical activity on top of your workouts, particularly during the day inside the work environment. Taking frequent breaks to move is important during any type of sedentary work. Here are some of the ways that I recommend that you can incorporate more movement into your, your day.
The first one is easy. Set a timer on your phone to get up from your desk every 30 minutes to 60 minutes. So, you know, just do it. The phone should be pinging you every 30 to 60 minutes that you need to move. And I know that a lot of smartwatches have this feature. So if you have a smartwatch, you can set this feature up on your smartwatch as well.
Second is to walk around the office while taking a call or if you're talking with your colleagues. walk around with them. At work, you can also change your meetings to walking meetings. When I create wellness programs at corporations, I always have walking or standing meetings as part of the program because They are so much better than sitting in a conference room from the feedback that I've received from the companies that I work with, and the employees that I work with is that they find standing meetings and walking meetings are more efficient and productive than sitting in a conference room.
So there's extra incentive to implement walking meetings or standing meetings into your workday. Next, I want to talk about stand up desk because this is one of the questions that I often receive from my clients, from my followers. People want to know, is it a good idea to invest in one and how to use one? A lot of the negative effects on your health that you see from the sedentary lifestyle is because your body is in one position for a very long period of time and you want to avoid that.
With a stand up desk or a treadmill desk, you can do that easily because with a stand up desk you can. switch between sitting in a chair and then standing at the desk. You don't want to spend more than an hour in any one position.
Every hour switch the positions. You don't have to necessarily invest in a very expensive hydraulic desk at all. You can easily find sit to stand desk converters on Amazon that can change any surface into a standing desk.
So , look into that. I'll put some of the recommended sit to stand desk converters into this show's, notes.
Take the stairs instead of the elevator. If you have access to stairs. Try to avoid using elevator that would increase your cardiovascular fitness and your energy expenditure by a lot. Use your lunch break or at least part of your lunch break to walk around the building.
That's an easy way to incorporate more movement. during your workday. Stand up and walk to a colleague's office instead of sending an email. And then when you come home, most of us, you know, turn the TV on and we watch TV while eating dinner. That's a big no no. Please don't watch TV while you're eating dinner.
And we just slump on our couches. So instead of doing that, maybe you can march in place. I would put a core workout on my phone and follow the core workout while watching TV. You can keep a couple of moderate dumbbells at in your living room and lift weights, do some gentle yoga stretches, or maybe you have a treadmill or a bike at home and you use those for your cardio session while you're watching TV.
So instead of Using your leisure time, TV watching activity as just, you know, something on the couch, use it to get more activity into your day. Also, instead of using the TV remote, I highly recommend getting up and changing the channels yourself. So these are a few ways that you can kick the sedentary habits to the curb.
My mission is to make. a health splash to get you to reap the benefits of small doses of physical activity by following simple activity snack videos. You can access them on my YouTube channel, Tone and Strengthen, and they can be done right at work. So if you are at work and you're wondering what kind of what do I do during my movement break?
Well, you Log into my channel and check out those exercises. They are called posture snacks and then some of them are also called activity snacks. The posture snacks are mostly stretches. Activity snacks are certain activities you can do for five to 10 minutes and that would get your movement or, and step count in.
If you're at home, heck your kids and pets can join. Everyone can smile. You will light up energetically and you'll be more productive if you're working at home. So if you want to learn more about how to incorporate more activity during your day, you can reach out to me for private coaching sessions. I do provide private coaching programs for nutrition and posture.
And I also provide corporate training programs, and to learn more about those, you can visit my website, www.
aishatahir. com. So it's one word, my full name, aishatahir. com. And I just want to help you guys be more active and be healthier. It was so nice chatting with you guys today. I can't wait to talk to you next week. Bye.
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