Sitting is the new smoking, or why our dad always has been so slim

(dictated via speech to text, which mean errors are to follow! does anyone else think the creators of voice typing are germanic, due to the system's excessive noun capitalization?) we have had a free little library outside our pad for a couple years now, & it's gotten pretty battered by the elements, but it endures as a local mini-fixture. the current one, just a big box I painted with waterproof coating, is the second iteration since a former sponsee of mine ran over the 1st one, then tried to hit & run, but James was standing at the fence watching as it happened.... anyways, sometimes we get the most interesting books dropped off, and one I have kept on the breakfast table pile intent to read has proved to be pretty damn interesting. the metabolic Factor by Jonny Bowden, turns out, is a modern classic of nutritional advice. on Amazon it's going for 45 to 200 plus bucks. wow! who would have thought.

the scary chapter from yesterday was about how toxins have been endemic in American bodies since around 1955, when chemicals from pollutants, agricultural products, and the s*** they put in our food and body products reached threat level midnight, as Michael Scott might say. this morning's chapter explains why our dad's always been so thin. he is always in motion, but he does not really exercise and never has. yet he has the same body weight at age 81 as he did in high school and few health troubles for a man of his vintage. here we go, the shortened chapter for you to enjoy.

chapter 12, pathway number 5, movement: more effective than exercise at burning fat?

most people don't understand why I distinguish movement from exercise. they Wonder: what's the difference? great question. after all, how is walking briskly to the bus different from walking briskly, or jogging around a track? how is lifting groceries different from lifting weights? after all, your biceps don't know if you're curling dumbbells or milk jugs. let's think of exercise as a specific type of movement. it's a structured planned event with the distinct goal of stimulating the metabolism for some defined benefit: burn fat, build muscle, get faster, get stronger, or train longer. climbing the stairway up to the lobby of your office building is movement. using the StairMaster at a challenging level for 20 minutes is exercise...

movement is just what you do in the process of living... all that [daily movement] is what researchers call NEAT: non-exercise associated thermogenesis. and it's an often ignored but crucial part of your fat burning metabolism [and health improvement]. NEAT Burns a whole lot of calories.To be exact, it burns a whopping 200% more calories than you burn when you spend 30 to 45 minutes at the gym exercising. that's exactly why people who walk and move a lot are thinner and healthier than those who don't, including those who exercise. in fact it turns out that this kind of movement is a huge component of total daily energy use, i.e., calorie burn. NEAT doesn't just include walking around, but all the moving you do during your day. standing up, sitting down, fidgeting!, typing on your computer, even tossing in your sleep! there's research that compares people who exercise for 30 minutes every day but who sit for most of the day with people who have a high daily level of activity just moving around but don't actually do any structured exercise. in terms of health and fitness, those who move around a lot do far better than the gym rats.

[crucial part for me:] the amount of calories you burn through NEAT is dramatically impacted by eating and exercise. the less you eat and the more you exercise, the more the body compensates by decreasing calorie burn from NEAT. that's that law of metabolic compensation for you again....if you're not taking NEAT into account then you're missing the boat. it's probably the most important contribution to your daily calorie burn, right after your resting metabolic rate, rmr, which is the number of calories it would take to keep you alive just laying around all day in a flotation tank.

this is one of the reasons why policy makers suggest walking 10,000 steps per day. and this time the policy makers got it right. 10,000 steps a day is one way to guarantee that we move more in the way that our naturally thin ancestors did. ...

by all accounts, more people do structured exercise today than at any other time in history of mankind, yet despite this, the average man or woman today is far heavier then those of past generations. this makes no sense at all, until, that is you look at the actual statistics on movement. [crucial part again!] our ancestors moved all day, every day. research shows that our hunter-gatherer ancestors walked from three and a half to more often 10 miles every single day, often carrying babies and hauling gear in the process. in contrast, modern men and women sit for 95% or more of their waking day.

... a rash of research has shown recently that inactivity may be the biggest risk factor of all for diabetes and heart disease, two of the end stage consequences of a damaged metabolism. in one study... researchers showed that movement was a far better predictor of health than either moderate or even intense physical exercise. in other words, sitting all day long and then going for a vigorous 30 minute run was not nearly as effective for health and metabolic function as just getting up and moving more in your daily life... jogging for 12 mi a week was not much different than walking for 12 miles a week from a weight loss perspective, and both dramatically enhanced cardiovascular health.

if you're wondering how that could possibly be so, consider the fact that numerous studies have shown that intense exercise, while perfectly healthy, can nonetheless cause compensatory reactions that increase hunger and cravings, which work against the very goals you're trying to achieve. in fact, this discovery led the great science writer, Gary taubes, to write a piece for New York magazine... the subtitle of which was why most of us believe that exercise makes us thinner, and why we are wrong.

[crucial part again:] some believe this effect is mediated by the stress hormone cortisol. intense exercise causes high levels of cortisol, which can have a number of damaging effects that are not typically seen with low intensity movements like walking.... and exercise doesn't make you immune from the damage. see, there's a difference between too much sitting and too little exercise. even if you exercise every day, you don't get a free pass from the metabolic consequences of extended periods of sitting. exercise May well be the greatest anti-aging drug on the planet, but it doesn't totally wipe out the damage done by spending 8 hours a day in a chair. even marathoners are not exempt. runners who sit for long periods of time when they're not training also have an increased risk of disease and death.

that's because the metabolic consequences of extended sitting are significant. the muscles go silent, metabolism slows, and the rate at which you burn calories drops to about one calorie per minute. your fat burning enzymes begin to drop. within as little as 24 hours your body is less able to use insulin effectively. you become less sensitive to insulin while your insulin resistance increases. and insulin resistance is a Hallmark of obesity and diabetes. in one study, sitting for two straight hours increased the glycemic response to a standardized meal by over 45% when compared to 80 minutes of sitting and 40 minutes of very light intensity walking. that means that the group that sat for 120 minutes had a clinically significant increase in metabolic risk simply because of an extra 40 minutes of sitting. ...if you sit for extended periods of time, you're taking some points out of your health Bank account., no matter how many deposits you make with healthy lifestyle choices.

the following suggestions [revealing the target reader to be an office-dweller of means!] will minimize the withdrawals: one, stand up for a minute or so every hour. two, take a walk to the water fountain. three, if you're on a plane, walk to the back of the plane at least once every hour or two. four, at your desk try sitting on a balance ball which constantly engages stabilizing muscles. five, walk up a flight of stairs. six, do some casual stair squats for a minute once every hour or so. remember, the whole point is to interrupt the extended period of sitting as frequently as possible.