Don't Sit Down...And If You Do, Get Up!

One hour spent watching TV reduces your life expectancy by 21.8 minutes, regardless of whether you exercise or not.

People who spend the most time sitting down have a relative risk increase of 112 percent for developing diabetes, 147 percent for cardiovascular disease, and 49 percent for dying prematurely, regardless of whether you exercise or not.

These are the results of two separate reports by the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study and the journal Diabetologia.  Apparently, it is the sedentary behavior which causes the health impact.  Even those who exercise on a regular basis are not immune from the ill effects of sedentary behavior.  A lot of jobs today involve sitting in front of a computer and a lot of people spend their leisure time sitting in front of a television.  The way to combat these effects are to simply cut down on the amount of time you spend watching TV and to get out of that chair as much as possible and move around to increase the number of skeletal muscle contractions in the very large muscles of your lower limbs.

Don't stop exercising, just focus on moving more during the rest of the time you're not exercising.

Get Up.  Get Out.  Don't Sit.