TOO MUCH WEIGHT? STAY LONGER STAND UP!

Obese people remain seated two and a half hours more per day than normal-weight individuals. So if they moved as much as others, just in their daily activities (housework, music, stomp ...), they could easily lose 15 pounds a year!

The discovery can be summarized as: the calories burned people in their daily activities, play a much greater role in obesity than we imagined. At the same time, we realize that obese subjects have a spontaneous tendency to inactivity. That is to say, they have a biological need to spend calories, there are two solutions: play sports or perform activities of daily. And the latter process seems very effective.

Twenty sedentary volunteers, the thin half, the other half obese, were enrolled in this study. They consistently took their meals in the hospital while they were pursuing their daily activities. Their movements, down to the smallest tapping foot, were measured for ten consecutive days. To achieve this feat, motion sensors were embedded in specially designed underwear and worn 24/24 during the ten days of the study.

The authors note that obese remain seated two and a half hours more per day than lean subjects. However, the sleep time is similar in both groups. After a quick calculation, this additional downtime is the expenditure of energy savings of 350 calories per day. So if obese moved as much as do thin in their daily activities, they could lose the equivalent of 15 pounds after a year.

These same researchers also show that even when obese people lose weight after a diet of eight weeks, they remain seated longer than thin who gained weight during a feeding. This tendency to stay longer sitting is probably biologically determined.

These data are particularly interesting to help overweight people to lose. There are not that diet and gymnastics. It is necessary to target inactivity and encourage to move more during daily activities. In this idea, we can encourage to stay mostly standing and not sitting, fidgeting instead of standing still, but also to change the environment, such as placing as far as kitchen table, books and magazines to away from the couch, glasses in the sideboard in the dining room, no chair next to the phone, etc.