Shake, rattle and roll

I have said before that exercise will not really help in losing weight. Exercise is good for its own sake as it maintains your health. Eating less is a better way to manage your weight, because cutting down by 250 calories a day is much easier than exercising it off.

Indeed, you may have noticed that you consider walking to the bus stop with the goal of exercising away that chocolate bar. Wishful thinking because to work off 4 ounces of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk needs you to walk 5 miles (10,000 steps) at a fast pace.

We often make mistakes about weight control strategies. For example, drinking diet fizzy pop doesn’t help us reduce weight. We tend to compensate for it by eating something else, taking the view that diet pop is the diet!

But doing nothing and lying about is generally a bad thing.

Peter Katzmarzyk and colleagues at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center examined the links between time spent sitting (at school, work, and at home) and mortality (death) in a representative sample of more than 17,000 Canadians. They report that time spent sitting was associated with increased risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality (there was no association between sitting and cancer death). Individuals who sat the most were about 50% more likely to die during the follow-up period than individuals who sat the least, even after controlling for age, smoking, and physical activity levels.

The researchers also examined the association between sitting and mortality after control for body weight in some cases. They report that sitting remains a significant predictor of mortality. This suggests that all things being equal (body weight, physical activity levels, smoking, alcohol intake, age, and gender) the person who sits more is at a higher risk of death than the person who sits less.( Fidgetting has been shown to be an effective strategy. So don’t listen when people tell you to stop!)

Most of us are sedentary throughout the work day and so most of us are at risk. And at home too, we spend little time working in the kitchen, cooking, laying the table, washing up. Even in front of the telly we don’t get up to change the channel. Our whole environment seems to be geared to minimising effort.

What to do? Throughout the day to move about and fidget as much as possible. Seek out opportunities to make more effort. Walk whenever possible.

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