Reduce the time you spend sitting!

If you’re only cutting calories to lose weight without increasing physical activity, you’re losing muscles. Muscle loss makes weight maintenance harder because muscle tissue burns calories, even at rest. The fastest and most lasting way to lose weight is by changing both parts of the equation – reducing calorie intake (diet) and increasing calorie expenditure (physical activity). In this week’s articles, you’ll learn how to enhance weight loss by burning more calories throughout the day.

Our ancestors didn’t have formal exercise programs. The time they spent working in fields, and factories, cooking, cleaning, and gardening kept them active. Despite consuming more calories than we do today, they weighed less because they sat less.

Compared to just five decades ago, people today are less active. At work, where many of us sit at desks for hours, we burn an average of 130 fewer calories per day. At home, we’re also less active, and it’s too tempting to sit in front of the TV in the evening. With conveniences like online shopping, banking, and socializing, we hardly even need to leave the comfort of our chairs.

All this inactivity adds up. On average, we spend half the day sitting, and that has consequences. Prolonged sitting is associated with an increased risk of health issues like diabetes, heart disease, and certain types of cancer – not to mention weight gain and obesity. Prolonged uninterrupted sitting can also negatively impact the spine and lead to lower back pain.

While regular physical activity is important for weight loss, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to outweigh the long-term health effects of excessive sitting. For instance, people who sit for eight or more hours a day have an elevated risk of heart disease, even if they exercise for an hour daily.