I really don’t like it when someone says ‘lose 50 pounds in 50 days’ or other ridiculous claims. But I have to mention this research I recently came across.
Sometimes we look at something and look at it with a doubtful eye. When I first came across this research I at first was doubtful, but then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the results this research shows reflect our daily habits – and what could be more powerful than that?
Recent research showed that lean people stand and walk more during the day than heavier people. If you do the calculation, over the course of a year this difference in daily activity can make up to a 36.5 pound difference!
Our habits create our lives.
We are all creatures of habit. We watch the same television shows, eat the same meals, take the same route to get to work and argue/chat about the same things with our friends when we get together at the same restaurants where we order the same meals and say the same things when it comes time to decide whether to have dessert or not.
We all know that once a habit is established, it becomes a challenge to break.
I am always encouraging my clients to form new habits and begin new patterns of daily behavior in their everyday lives – but we don’t always listen.
Even though they know by drinking more water they can improve their health and get closer to their health and fitness goals I still have clients that after years of training confess every session that they are ‘not getting enough’.
It would seem that the law of human nature demands that when a option of change is presented to us, somewhere inside we make a calculation as to the possible benefits of that change in habit and measure that against the inconvenience of remembering a water bottle or taking the extra time out of the day to drink/pee/complain about how much you are peeing.
So in my quest to help all of us achieve optimal health with minimal change, here is the latest suggestion:
Get up, stand up.
Walk around.
Heres why:
In a research review by Kravitz, he found that in a study of non-exercisers – half of which were considered ‘lean’ (L), the other half ‘mildly obese’ (MO) the following was found:
On average, the ‘L’ group stoop upright for 153 minutes longer than the ‘MO’ group.
Sleep times (suprisingly) were not different between the two groups. The lean subjects had significantly more total body ambulatory movement, which consisted of standing and walking.
the extra movement by group L would average at 352 ± 65 calories per day,
There are 3500 calories in a pound of fat.
If you weighed more, then you would burn even more calories because you would have more weight to move around.
This would be equivalent to 36.5 lbs in one year.
Of course things like technology, transportation, computer-based worksites, portion sizes and calories in restaurant meals, low-cost fast food availability all play a large factor in what gets us there.
So get moving!
References:James A. Levine, Lorraine M. Lanningham-Foster, Shelly K. McCrady, Alisa C. Krizan, Leslie R. Olson, Paul H. Kane, Michael D. Jensen, Matthew M. Clark. “Interindividual Variation in Posture Allocation: Possible Role in Human Obesity”. Science 28 January 2005: Vol. 307. no. 5709, pp. 584 – 586. 20 Mar. 2007.
