Take a break from sitting!
Fri, 2011-02-04 10:52Written by Tarja, Nokia Wellness Diary team
Most of us spend a great portion of our days sitting. A growing number of scientists argue that sitting too long during the day really can harm you. According to an article in Science Daily web the researchers argue that risks associated with prolonged sitting seem to be obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease risk factors and unhealthy dietary patterns to mention a few. However, it is not only a question of increasing physical activity. The latest findings argue that reducing the time spent sitting is the key for reducing health related risks. Sports-medicine experts Dr Richard Weiler and Dr Emmanuel Stamatakis argue in the BBC News article on laziness that also energy-saving devices, like remote controls, not only make our lives easier, but make us lazy and keep us in sitting position longer and thus create risks to our health.
I read many different articles on the subject and this sitting thing really struck me - especially because I sit extended periods of time during the day. I read all those articles in a sitting position and I felt like standing up right away. I decided to take a break and walk around the office to think this over. What can I do to improve my situation? I decided to search for help.
I found an article in American Heart Association’s web pages called “Physical activity in your daily life”. It contains good tips to increase physical activity at the office. Here are the ones which suit me the best
- Brainstorm project ideas with a co-worker while taking a walk
- Stand while talking on the telephone
- Take the stairs instead of the elevator (Do you know why? Because I already do that!)
- Walk down the hall to speak with someone rather than using the telephone.
On top of that I decided to start moving my legs more while sitting. Stay tuned and I tell you later how I managed to follow these new ways of increasing my daily activity level.
What do you do to increase your daily activity level? How do you manage to stand and walk more than before? Share your personal tips with us!
- Tarja
Comments
All these little things are in some ways easier to adopt, because they don't seem "exercise" like what you would do in a gym, but after you realize that you are doing them you can feel a sense of satisfaction, too.
So the most important step is to realize that and keep doing little things that can improve general wellness!
Also, other things that can be done are not to ask someone else to bring us things we need, go to people we work with and not call them with the office phone and many others.
@Steceso. It is exactly as you say! I could not agree more. I have started to do those little things more and more. Luckily it has always been very natural to me to go to talk to people f2f if they are sitting near enough, so luckily that habit has been wellness improving already.
It has a lot to do with changing attitude to moving your body, as you say "not asking somebody else to move, you should move yourself". Good luck with your small changes Steceso!
I want to admit that the day i installed the wellness diary on my phone i started to take a walk and i remembered the first message that came to my phone was that monitoring helps your health habits.so this is a good app .keep developing
Hi masx68! I am so glad to read this! I have the same experience. I have become so much more conscious of what positive things I am doing to improve my wellbeing since I started to use Wellness Diary. I just went to take a smoothie from our cafe and did that using stairs both downstairs and upstairs and that feels good! Good luck with your efforts masx68!
Added to sitting to much i notice that back pain susceptiblity increased so there definitely needs to be a balance between sitting and standing,for every 20 minutes sitting there must be at least 5 minutes standing/walking.
how to delete the customized exercise in Nokia Wellness Diary?
@melakais: I agree! I also suffer from back pain and standing or walking really helps to relief the pain!
@sathisha.ms: I am sorry, but there is no way of deleting your customized exercise form Wellness Diary. Not at the moment. But I forward your suggestion to the develeopment team.
I use ErgoPop. This kind of function could be a good idea for Wellness Diary. The functionality is quite good.