There are endless fitness tips that I can give you on motivation,new classes, finding great support to assist your health goals etc. Instead I will give you my two top tips for smashing both your health goals and assisting in your work productivity.
In the last four years my work has incorporated a lot more desk based time with the social media marketing and advances in IT we have to keep up with changes. This I noted was affecting my health. Steadily adding a pound or two on more sedentary weeks even though working out with many clients and eating the clean diet and giving me lower back pain . So I made a major change towards the end of 2013 and bought a standing desk, apart from having more strength in my legs, better digestion, increased calorie burn (so a flatter tum). I am energetic and alert for longer. I have regained an upright posture and productivity level has soared. I no longer feel I have to leave my desk for a break, which for some often leads to an unnecessary snack.
Studies have claimed major health benefits for standing for much of the day as opposed to sitting.
How many hours a day you spend sitting? Fewer than eight? More than 10? A recent survey found that many of us spend up to 12 hours a day sitting on our bottoms looking at computers or watching television. If you throw in the seven hours we spend sleeping then that adds up to 19 hours a day being sedentary.
Sitting changes the way our bodies deal with sugar. When you eat, your body breaks down the food into glucose, which is then transported in the blood to other cells.
Glucose is an essential fuel but persistently high levels increase your risk of diabetes and heart disease. Your pancreas produces the hormone insulin to help get your glucose levels back down to normal, but how efficiently your body does that is affected by how physically active you are.
Standing while you are working at the desk isn’t something new. Winston Churchill wrote while working at a special standing desk, as did Ernest Hemingway and Benjamin Franklin.
Prolonged sitting has not only been linked to problems with blood glucose control, but also a sharp reduction in the activity of an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase, which breaks down blood fats and makes them available as a fuel to the muscles. This reduction in enzyme activity leads to raised levels of triglycerides and fats in the blood, increasing the risk of heart disease.
Now that doesn’t sound like much, but it adds up to about 50 calories an hour. If you stand for three hours a day for five days that’s around 750 calories burnt. Over the course of a year it would add up to about 30,000 extra calories, or around 8lb of fat.
Put that into activity levels that is the equivalent of running about 10 marathons a year. Just by standing up three or four hours in your day at work
My other tip is check your water supply
Make sure you have plenty on tap!
Read the benefits below to see why I keep coming back to this simple diet improvement.
We spend much of our lives at work so make these changes for yourself and or your workforce in 2014.
For any information regarding your corporate, personal health, or standing desks. Contact me [email protected] or visit www.sospacorporate.co.uk
Have a very Happy and Healthy 2014
Gail x