Sitting Kills!

I know! Shocking! High drama here at the barre, but it's true. Sitting kills, people. Sitting kills people. (This is one of those cases where the comma doesn't really have dire consequences. Unlike the classic, 'Let's eat, Grandma!' vs. 'Let's eat Grandma!' In which case, someone would also be killed. But I digress.)

Actually, it's not so much the act of sitting, but the staying there that's the problem. This is according to the research of Dr. Joan Vernikos, the former director of NASA's Life Sciences division. Her job was to assess the health of astronauts before, during and after space missions. Being an astronaut seems like a pretty cool job, no? Maybe, but as it turns out, it wreaks havoc with your body.

This is Dr. Vernikos. See? She's not sitting!



Dr. Vernikos and her colleagues found that astronauts manifested many disturbing symptoms after returning from jaunts in space, including reduced strength and stamina, back pain, disturbed balance, decreased cardiac output and kidney stones, just to name a few. In short, they experienced the same symptoms associated with aging. Yes, cool as it may be, spending time in space ages the human body--even a mission of just a few days had a profoundly negative impact.

This is her fascinating book.

The reason? Gravity. Or lack thereof. It turns out we really need gravity. Obviously, so long as we're living on earth, we're experiencing gravity, even when we're parked in the dreaded chair, but standing up, sitting down, squatting, pushing and pulling all require us to work against the force of gravity, and that is very beneficial. Our bodies were designed to interact with gravity, and when we're deprived of this opportunity, bad things happen. Long periods of uninterrupted sitting has been found to be an independent risk factor for premature death.

!!! I know. Refer to image above.

If premature death isn't enough of a motivator for you, here's another: movement stimulates the enzyme lipoprotein lipase, which attaches to your fat cells and transports them to your muscles to be used as fuel. (Of course, how the body uses fuel is more involved that that, but movement heads you in the right direction.) Pretty cool, huh? Almost as cool as being an astronaut.

As I mentioned earlier, it isn't actually the sitting that is the problem--it's prolonged sitting. As it turns out, prolonged standing isn't much better; the key is to alter your position frequently. We weren't meant to sit at a desk all day. We were designed to squat, kneel, bend, move.

Dr. Vernikos recommends standing up at least 35 times per day, but these standings-up must be spread out throughout the day. You can't just bob up and down 35 times in a row and call it good. It isn't. The whole point is making these sitting interruptions a part of your whole day.

I know, this is disquieting for many of you with desk jobs, but it turns out the solution isn't that difficult. Really, just stand up and sit back down again. Early and often. That's it! You don't have to do anything particularly heroic to avoid the problem.

Here are a few suggestions:

• If you're the type who gets engrossed in computer work, set a timer to go off every 20 minutes to remind you to stand up. Seems silly, maybe, but timers are awesome. I love timers. I use them for all kinds of things. Eventually it will become a habit and you won't need the timer anymore.
• If you use a laptop or iPad primarly, keep in on a higher surface, like a counter. I keep mine in my kitchen for this very reason. I found when I kept in at a desk or on the coffee table, I would plant my bum on a seat, never to rise again. While prolonged standing isn't really better for you than sitting, you're much more likely to move around from a standing position than you are from a comfy chair.
• Speaking of chairs, Dr. Vernikos suggests using a straight-backed, hard chair without arm rests. Why? It's less comfortable, thus you're less likely to park in it for hours. Also, a straight-backed chair will encourage better posture.
• If you are an office worker, try to rearrange your work station so everything is NOT within reach of your swivel chair. It will force you to get up and down, to reach and move, making these movements a natural part of your work day. (And while you're at it, ditch the swivel chair.)  

So those are the facts. Now it's time for my color commentary. (I know, it's your favorite part.)

An interesting thing has occurred since I started blogging about exercise. Numerous people from my real life have told me how they struggle with fitting exercise into their daily lives. Many people have great reasons for this, everything from crazy work schedules to new babies to injuries--some of them quite major and tragic. People lament their inability to 'exercise' and tell me how much they wish they could work up a good sweat.

And I feel their pain. Truly. You know how I feel about sweating. In a workout, anyway. Love it. And I'm quite good at it, as you may recall.

But sometimes life gets in the way, and this is why I love it when I come across research like this. Studies like the ones Dr. Vernikos has conducted show us that just doing a formal workout for 30-60 minutes a day does not give you a free pass to sit around for the rest of the day. Moving around is important. If your 'workout' leaves you so exhausted that you can't bring yourself to move around during the day, then you need to cut back on the workout.

You can do an awful lot for your physical health by just moving around during the day. If you just had a baby, you are exhausted and probably not exercising. But you are certainly still moving around, because babies keep you on your feet. You're moving, walking, bouncing, swaying, swinging, all to the soothe the blessed infant who won't--for the love of God and all that is holy--take a frickin' nap without movement. You're baby is probably most comfortable when you are uncomfortable, which stinks--but take heart! It's good for you!

Don't you feel better now? No? I don't blame you. I wouldn't either. But don't beat yourself up for not getting in a workout. You're moving, and it's good for you.

At the same time, I do think it's important to do challenging exercise, but if you're in a season of life in which that's really hard to do, don't lament. Just stand up. And sit back down again. Over and over, throughout the day.

The Houseworkout

What exactly constitutes a workout?

This is the questioned raised by this article. If you can't be bothered to click the link, I'll sum it up for you. A study conducted by the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland tried to gauge whether or not people were getting useful daily exercise, and if so, how much. Over 4,500 men and women were asked about their exercise habits. The researchers (according to the article) surmised that housework was insufficient exercise. Why? Because those who counted it as a workout were more likely to be overweight than those who cited other forms of exercise.

Seriously?! Since when is the size of the participants the determining factor of what counts as exercise? The researchers considered the possibility that the overweight participants may have been 'rewarding themselves' with treats after doing chores. Ok people, the eating of treats has absolutely nothing to do with the intensity or value of a physical activity. Yes, you may cancel out your caloric burn, but that doesn't mean you didn't glean all the other marvelous benefits of exercise just because you tucked into a burrito afterwards.

Now, granted, this is from Britain's Daily Mail, a newspaper whose most useful function is probably lining hamster cages all over the United Kingdom. I haven't bothered to track down the study itself, but still, the article continues to perpetuate the notion that exercise must equal thinness.

However, it did get me thinking... This is certainly something people of ages past never had to think about. I'm sure back in the day, housekeeping was fabulous exercise. Did you ever read Little House on the Prairie? I betcha Ma had some serious guns from pumping all that water, or better still, hauling it up from the creek. And carpet beating--wow, what a workout, not to mention scrubbing laundry on a board, or even cranking a mangle, which was celebrated as one of the great mod cons of it's time.

 Aww, sweet Ma... doing all that wash by hand and smiling, too!

For better or worse, we now live in the age of button pushing. I'm thankful for all my appliances... truly, from the bottom of my heart, but I will grudgingly admit that housekeeping probably isn't the great workout we'd like to think it is, though it is movement and you know how I feel about that. You can get some NEAT from getting neat. (heh heh. sorry.... couldn't resist.)

So imagine my delight when I happened upon this book at my local library. Yes, people, it's called
The cLEAN Momma Workout, the title of which begs the question of whether we'll ever see it's cLEAN Daddy counterpart? Sadly, I suspect not.

Now, at the risk of sounding like that old joke about actors--you know the one--how many actors does it take to change a lightbulb? Five--one to actually change the bulb and the other four to stand around and say, "I could have done that!" I've actually tried to turn housecleaning into a workout. (After over 20 years as a fitness buff, I've tried just about everything.)

We used to live in a multi-story townhouse and I noticed my heart rate spike every time I lugged our behemouth of a vacuum up and down the stairs. So one day, I popped ABBA Gold into the CD player, strapped on my heart rate monitor and tried to clean the house as quickly as I could.

It was a decent workout. I think I burned something like 200 calories in a half hour, so to the extent that calorie burn is an indicator of good-workout-ness, it was pretty good. And it was nice to have the house clean at the end, but I decided it wasn't something I wanted to do on a regular basis (by that I mean cleaning as a workout, not just cleaning in general). It just wasn't very fun, and I found it tough to balance the goal of cleaning with that of exercising. Even though I was moving quickly, it took longer to do the tasks because I was trying to chase the burn or keep my heart rate up. I decided I'd rather just get my chores done as quickly as I could so I could do a devoted workout.

And that is one of the reasons motherhood hit me like a ton of bricks. I like to do things in 'devoted' blocks of time. I'm going to clean the kitchen, check! Now I'm going to exercise, check! Off write a blog post, check! Well, as anyone who has spent any time with small children knows, they don't give you blocks of time. It's tough to get the dishes done when trains are being catapulted into the toilet, you know? Learning to do things in little spurts is the way to go with small people, so I was game for the cLEAN Momma Workout. Bring it on.

The author is Carolyn Barnes, who happened upon this routine when her life was basically falling apart. She was in the middle of a divorce and filing for bankruptcy. She was out of shape and her house was a mess, so she developed a series of exercises to do while she was doing chores. They involve barre-type leg lifts while doing the dishes, squats with the laundry basket, lunging with the vacuum, that sort of thing.

The move that got it all started is one she calls 'the rag drag.' You put a rag on the floor under your foot and do the series of lunge-type moves while you clean the floor. It does give you a nice burn in the stationary leg, and it's a common move you'll see in functional fitness-type workouts. It is indeed functional for mopping up spills, but it's tough to maintain good form while getting into the corners. I know this because I've spent the last few days incorporating Carolyn's moves into my daily chores.

I did plié squats to empty the dishwasher, pushups against the kitchen counter while reading email, lateral lunges to put some books on the shelf. I can't say it was earth-shattering for me, partly because I already do some of these things (I did wall squats while waiting for DH to pick me up at the market the other day) and partly because I would really rather just get my chores done. Stopping to stretch with the tea towel before folding it just doesn't make sense to me. I'd rather fold it, then stretch. But I know not everyone loves exercise as much as I do. I'll rearrange my day to fit in a workout, but if that's not your thing, this might be a good fit.

Carolyn says she has attention deficit disorder, and I can absolutely appreciate how these mini-spurts throughout the day would be appealing over a dedicated time of exercise. If you have ADD, check it out. Then again, if you have ADD, you might not have gotten this far in my post.

There is a section on diet that contains your pretty standard diet advice, plus some nice looking recipes. The book is heavy on motivational talk--how you're worth spending time on yourself and you shouldn't just hang out in yoga pants all day. (That bit hurt a little, I'm not going lie.)

I do really like how she has you incorporating movement into your daily life. It takes some getting used to, but after a while, I found myself naturally squatting to pick things up instead of hinging from the hip. Bending forward is easier, but it can be tough on your back, so Carolyn's tips can be really beneficial in more ways than one.

If you're already working out and generally active, you might not find the book to be of overwhelming value, though I do think it's worth a look-see. I'm going to try a couple of the recipes and it did give me some new ideas for creative moves to do while I'm waiting for the kettle to boil.

So is housekeeping a workout? I'd say if you incorporate Carolyn's exercises into your routine, you can certainly add some very valuable movement in your day. I do think Ma would be in a state of complete shock that we feel the need to do this, but times have changed. I'm off to push the button on my washing machine.

Oh, to be Amish...

I freaked DS1 out the other day. I caught him licking his plate out of the corner of my eye. I scolded him for it, all the while looking at his brother across the table. He said, in desperate, astonished voice, "How did you know?! You were looking the other way!!"

Part of me thought this would be a good time to educate him on the science of peripheral vision, how we are fearfully and wonderfully made and that it is NOT ok to engage in such savagery just because you don't think I can see you, etc. What a fine teaching moment this could be!

Then I thought better of it and responded thus: "I have super powers."

Oh, to have had a camera trained on my firstborn at that moment... the look of wonder, awe and new-found respect for his mother!

In truth, I'd be hard pressed to explain the science of anything. I'm really not a science-y person. I'm humanities and liberal arts all the way. Would you like fries with that? Tall, grande or venti?

However, today I am going to try. We are going to discuss NEAT--Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.

NEAT is the energy you spend throughout the day on everything BUT sleeping, eating, sitting around or what you think of as 'exercise.' I'm talking about doing the laundry, cooking, walking around your office, breaking up fights between your small people, running for a train, grocery shopping, fidgeting, you name it. That's NEAT. And as it turns out, NEAT is very important for your overall health. A high NEAT really raises your metabolic rate. Sitting for long periods of time is not good for you. You can do all the Physique 57 and Rachel Cosgrove workouts in the world, but if you sit on your bum for the rest of the day, you're not going to be as fit and healthy as you think you are.

This is one of the psychological downsides of hard exercise. People think, 'Man, I just killed that workout! I'm Zena Warrior Princess (or HeMan, as the case may be.) I am now officially an Amazon, and can 'reward' myself by sitting on the couch for the rest of the day!'

EEEHHHH!  Wrong. Your overall movement throughout the day is crucial. Not to mention the fact that if you sit for hours after a killer workout, you will be massively stiff and sore.

This news might be a major downer for those of you who sit at a desk all day, but fear not, faithful readers! Do I have a gadget for YOU!

Meet my Fitbit:

Isn't it cute?

Fitbit is a fitness tracker... it's kind of a glorified pedometer. I've been wearing a Fitbit for nearly three years. This is actually my third Fitbit. The other two fell apart, but I'm happy to say that they have changed the design and the newer models are more durable. And the Fitbit people replaced my first one for free and sold me the third one for 50% off, so I harbor no ill will. Clearly, since I'm giving them a huge plug on my soon-to-be-famous blog.

This is the One model, which is very tiny.

 Here it is compared to my thigh-bouncing quarter. Beside it is the clip you use to attach it to your clothes. I usually clip it to my waistband, like so:

Some women clip it to a bra, but I'm not going to show you a picture of that. This is a family blog. I used to clip it to mine, but I kept wanting to check my step count throughout the day, and it isn't really socially acceptable to keep reaching into your shirt, you know?

In addition to the One, they have models you can wear on your wrist including a fancy new one that sings and dances for you in addition to counting steps (kidding.) I've also heard good things about the Zip, which is bigger than the One, but also cheaper.

The Fitbit syncs to your computer and gives you graphs and charts of your activity. It not only tracks steps but also stairs, 'active' minutes, sleep quality (I never use that) and a host of other things. You can input your food intake and compare it to calories burned... the possibilities are endless!

One of the nice things about being a stay-at-home-mom (from a fitness perspective) is that I naturally have a very high NEAT. Especially since I'm a boy mom. Boys are like puppies--you have to run them everyday. I wonder if I'd clock fewer steps if I were a girl mom? Any girl moms (or dads) want to weigh in on this?

Experts (whoever they may be) recommend 10,000 steps per day. Even keeping up with my little puppies, it can sometimes be hard to get in 10k a day. I have noticed I become less efficient in my chores to eek out a few more steps when I need them. By that I mean I could carry seventeen things upstairs from the basement (remember, I have super powers), but breaking up the load into several trips gets me way more steps.

Other people who get lots of steps are the Amish. A study showed Amish men get an average of 18k steps a day (!), and Amish women, 14k. That's a lot of steps, people. (Note: this is traditional Amish communities, not the ones who work in tourist shops. They're as bad off as the rest of us.) More amazingly, the Old Order Amish clocked these averages during a less busy season of the year, not harvest time, and only on Sundays did their averages dip significantly--down to 10k. (I know you're wondering how they squared using technological devices like pedometers with their consciences... turns out, if they're borrowed, it's ok. You have to read the fine print.) These Amish have very low rates of obesity, which is nice for them, since they don't have Netflix.

If the Fitbit is a little too pricey or too techie for you, a regular pedometer could work, but it's not as fun as a Fitbit. I've heard good things about the Omron brand. In fact, I bought one for my dad for Father's Day. I didn't buy him a Fitbit because he's a little Amishy when it comes to technology, not because I'm cheap. (He is my dad, after all.) A couple of weeks after he received it, he called me at 9am to tell me he had already walked the length of the Gobi desert.

Which leads me to the one downside of the Fitbit. It can be a little addictive. I want you all to know that even if you get all the way downtown and walk around all day, only to realize that you forgot to put it back on after you got out of the shower that morning, the unrecorded steps still count. Though that scenario is most head-wrecking and I feel for you. Really, I do.

Lastly, I just want to say to any Amish people who might be reading my blog on a borrowed computer, you are most welcome to come over and I'll lend you some of my stuff. Just borrow a phone and call me, ok?