Stand up for weight loss

We often use the phrase, “You might want to sit down to hear this”, but on this occasion you might want to stand up. A new study by a researcher from Chester University has found that standing up at work can help you lose significant weight.

The researcher and a colleague used a lectern to do their work for three hours each day. So instead of sitting for those three hours they were standing. It is not such a ridiculous idea either; famous examples of people who chose to work standing up include Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, Donald Rumsfeld and Thomas Jefferson.

Analysis of metabolism found that the researchers burned 604 more kilojoules per day just by working standing up for three hours. That effectively burns off a can of soft drink and over the course of a year equates to a weight loss of 3.6 kilos. If you were to stand for your full working day then might equal a weight loss of around 8 kilos in a year.

The benefits of standing to do your work don’t end there. Other research has shown that sitting itself is an unhealthy thing to do.

One study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology involved more than 123,000 people. These people were chosen because they had no history of cancer, heart disease, stroke or lung disease. Between 1993 and 2006, the researchers monitored how many hours the individuals spent sitting. The findings were that women who sat for more than six hours per day were 37 per cent more likely to die during the course of the study. Men who sat more than six hours per day were 18 per cent more likely to die than men who sat for fewer than three hours per day.

Sitting is known to increase triglycerides, bad HDL cholesterol, overall cholesterol, blood glucose, resting blood pressure and the hormone leptin. The researchers from this study concluded that a simple health recommendation to the largely sedentary population would be to just get up and walk around during the day.

Add these two studies together and it might be worth having a chat to your boss about the possibility of trading in your traditional desk for a lectern-style affair. You won’t have the endless fun of spinning on your chair but you’ll be fitter for it. The only problem might be that if you are experiencing a bit of intra-office conflict you’ll need to find a better phrase than, “I’m not going to stand for this”, because…well, you will.