Office workers need to cut back on their sitting, with a standing desk maybe. You can also take short walks around your desk when not occupied, or when your boss is.
Have you ever wondered whether you are sitting enough for optimum health? Is eight hours of sitting per day enough, or should you aim for 10 hours?
Thankfully, an international team of researchers has provided us with some answers, telling us exactly how we should divide our time every day for optimum health.
The researchers, led by Dr Christian Brakenridge of Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology, analyzed how 2,000 people spent their days and determined that the ideal daily balance is six hours of sitting, five hours and 10 minutes of standing, eight hours, and 20 minutes of sleeping, and four hours and 20 minutes of physical activity.
Before you panic about the imbalance in your daily routine, let me break down each of the “24-hour time-use compositions,” as the researchers called them:
SITTING: The recommended daily amount is only six hours. Depending on your job, this may seem too little or too much. If you’re a construction worker, you probably don’t sit much on your job. When you return home, you need to plan your evening to incorporate enough sitting.
Spouse: “Do you want to go to the gym with me?”
Construction worker: “I’d love to, but I didn’t do enough sitting today. I’ll be on the couch for the next five hours.”
Spouse: “Oh honey, I’m proud of you. You’re so disciplined!”
If you work in an office, you probably need to cut back on your sitting. You may need to get a standing desk. You can also take short walks around your desk whenever you aren’t occupied, or your boss is.
When you get home, you need to plan your evening to incorporate less sitting.
Spouse: “Aren’t you glad you went to the Vir Das comedy show with me?”
Office worker: “It was okay.”
Spouse: “Just okay? You gave him 50 standing ovations!”
Office worker: “I did that for me, not him.”
STANDING: The ideal amount is 5 hours and 10 minutes. In other words, you need to do almost as much standing as you do sitting. If you’re stuck on a plane for a long flight, try to spend at least half the time standing in line to use the restroom. If there isn’t a line, just stand up in the aisle, open the overhead baggage compartment, and pretend to look for something.
For better health, don’t complain about all the other lines you find yourself in, whether at the supermarket or voting place.
Voter: “This line isn’t moving at all. I can’t stand it, all this standing.”
Poll worker: “I wish I could switch places with you. All this sitting doesn’t sit well with me.”
SLEEPING: The recommended amount is eight hours and 20 minutes. For many of us, it’s hard to sleep for that long. That’s because we go to bed too late, after spending too much time sitting. But if we incorporate more standing and more exercise into our lives, we’ll be fast asleep before our heads hit the pillow.
EXERCISE: We should ideally get four hours and 20 minutes of exercise every day. That may seem excessive, but you’ll be glad to know that we can divide this into two hours and 10 minutes of light-intensity physical activity, and two hours and 10 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity.
Any activity that doesn’t increase your heart rate or makes you tired might be considered light-intensive. Washing the dishes, ironing or cooking would certainly qualify. Knitting would not unless you’re competing in AARP’s Speed-Knitting Contest.
For moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, you’d need to increase your heart rate by walking briskly, running, or reading a Stephen King novel. (Please try to stand while reading “The Stand.”)
Can you really complete two hours and 10 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in an average day? Probably not unless you’re training for the Olympics or working for Amazon.
But don’t worry: the ideal daily balance is based on a variety of health outcomes, which the researchers explain, in simple terms, as “optimal glycemic control and cardiometabolic risk markers.”
You can still improve your health by shifting the balance slightly, especially if it means being less sedentary. As Dr Brakenridge might say, “Keep your feet on the ground and your derrière in the air.”
Photo courtesy: Unsplash
