I couldn’t believe when I read about this strong correlation between sitting a lot and gaining weight. I mean, logically, one knows that being active and having a fitness routine is a great way to guarantee you will not become obese or at least will havea healthy heart and lungs, as well as a healthy outlook on life and mental fitness, but there is new research being done that shows that simply standing up more than sitting can help turn your fat burning enzymes back on.

You see, they studied lab rats even and found that when they were idle for long periods of time, their fat burning enzymes actually shut down, but the simply act of standing up actually made them turn back on. This means that standing and not even moving then, logically, would mean that you are giving your body a better shot at burning fat more efficiently. Wonder if this means a recumbent bike is still as useful as we thought, since essentially you are “sitting down” although admittedly not in a conventional way, because you are in motion.

It is not known why this correlation even is a fact at this point, and it is really in its preliminary stages of research, but logic would tell us that we as a human race were not meant to sit for long periods of time as we do today thanks to computers and televisions, and that in itself may be contributing to the obesity epidemic, but it is still very interesting that it’s not actually getting up and moving around that may be the problem, it’s simply the act of standing up on our two feet that may be shooting us in the foot - no pun intended.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 23rd, 2007 at 11:43 am and is filed under Fitness Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.