Have you ever thought about the amount of time you are sat for each day? How long are you sat whilst travelling, at work or sat watching TV?
Sitting for long periods of time can impact your health with many adults spending more than 7 hours a day sat down and office workers are said to sit for an average of 10 hours per day. Even if you do have a good exercise routine and go to the gym you may still be sitting for too long. Your health is impacted by this increasing the risk of the following conditions – type 2 diabetes, colon cancer, lower back pain and herniated lumbar discs, cardiovascular disease, mortality, slow blood circulation, high cholesterol and obesity.
The NHS recommends at least 150 minutes a week of exercise to reduce the risk of poor health and to keep us moving. This helping to break up long periods of being sat, adding activity and movement. On Your Feet Britain is an annual event held on the 26th of April 2019 aimed to generate awareness on the impact of sitting and how to keep moving to improve your health. So we thought we’d take a look at some ways you can reduce the amount of time sat down and increase your activity levels.
Children:
Setting certain times for your children to do physical activity will create a routine and become a normal daily process.
Walking your children to school or if you need to park further away so you have to walk some of the distance.
make exercise part of your family time and find an active hobby you can all do together.
The change For Life website has some great fun activities for all the family to get involved - https://www.nhs.uk/change4life/activities
Encourage children to earn screen time, this could be doing household chores which keeps them moving.
Put their favourite music on and dance round the living room.
Here are some ways to keep moving whilst at work:
Stand during phone calls gives you a reason to move and can help you sound more confident and clearer.
Walk over to a colleague to speak to them instead of emailing can give that personal touch and build relationships.
Take the stairs not the lift and park your car further away from the door, every extra step counts!
Set regular reminders to get up and move away from your desk to stay active and avoid stiffness.
Organise meetings stood up or go for a walk whilst having your meeting to boost creativity and keep meetings on track.
Walk around whilst taking calls on your mobile.
Fitness for seniors:
Find local groups and activities to get involved with increasing both your active time and enabling you to meet more people.
Be more active around the house with chores, cooking and answering the phone whilst stood up and walking.
Walking is one of the easiest ways to increase your activity level either alone, with friends or find a local walking group.
gardening can provide a good workout in itself and be rewarding when seeing the end results.
Yoga and pilates are suitable for all levels helping you to stay active, improve flexibility, strength, balance and posture.
We hope you found this useful and it gave you some new ideas on how to stay active. Why not share your success stories with us on social media.
