Changing just one habit at work could help you lose weight, study finds

We all know how easy it would be to just sit at work all day (if you can).

But there’s also some risks that can stem from that habit — including an earlier death, no matter how much time you spend exercising, according to a study published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

If that doesn’t scare you into standing, perhaps the prospect of getting a slimmer body will. And researchers from the Mayo Clinic published a study in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology that found substituting sitting for standing could give you just that.

In the study, researchers looked at 46 studies with just under 1,200 participants, who were 60 percent men, had an average age of 33 and an average weight of 143 pounds.

The study found that if someone who weighed 143 pounds decided to stand for six hours a day instead of sitting for that period — and didn’t increase the amount of food they ate — they would lose an average of 5.5 pounds a year and 22 pounds in four years.

That’s because you burn .015 more calories each minute when standing rather than sitting, the researchers found. That means a person at that weight would burn an additional 54 calories a day if they stood for six hours they would usually sit.

"Standing for long periods of time for many adults may seem unmanageable, especially those who have desk jobs, but, for the person who sits for 12 hours a day, cutting sitting time to half would give great benefits," Dr. Lopez-Jimenez said, according to EurekaAlert.

Researchers also found that men burn more calories than women when they stand, positing that it’s because of their higher muscle mass.

But there are other health benefits from standing aside from weight loss, Lopez-Jimenez told Global News.

“Standing not only burns more calories,” he said. “The additional muscle activity is linked to lower rates of heart attacks, strokes, and diabetes, so the benefits of standing could go beyond weight control.”

Of course, there’s another study that suggests the opposite. Published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, it found that those who mostly stand at work have twice the risk of heart disease than those who remain seated for most of the time. Daily cigarette smokers actually had a lower rate of heart disease than people who primarily stood at work, the researchers found.

But don’t get rid of your sit-stand desk because of that last study.

“For those who may wonder whether their standing or variable desk is a health risk, the short answer is ‘No.’ The focus of our study was prolonged standing at work, without opportunities to sit,” Peter Smith, an author of the study, wrote for The Conversation. “We expect that people using sit/stand desks do sit when they feel tired, unlike those in occupations that require prolonged standing, such as grocery store clerks or line cooks.”

from Health - Google News http://ift.tt/2DUit9X