Simple steps can increase activity level

Sixty minutes of sweat. Wouldn’t it be nice if it happened each day?
It’s not practical to expect that of everyone, doctors know. They just want to get us moving.
So how do we do that when many, if not most, of us sit at a desk all day?
Start by getting up.
“You’ve got to try to be active, whether you do it in a structured or unstructured way,“ said Peter Brubacker, a professor of health science and exercise at Wake Forest University.
Experts say that we are supposed to get at least 30 to 60 minutes of exercise five days a week. The ideal thing would be to spend that time running, swimming or doing some other form of workout that increases our heart rate.
Working out on an elliptical machine is structured exercise, as is jogging, power-walking and aerobics. Unstructured exercise can be something as strenuous as raking leaves or something as easy as taking a walk with your dog or even standing up from your desk chair. “Anything that requires you to expend energy above seated resting,“ Brubacker said.
Standing quietly burns about 1.2 times as many calories as sitting. A 150-pound person walking slowly (less than two miles an hour, say, to the bathroom or the water fountain) will burn twice as many calories as the same person sitting at a desk.
Even people who fidget are likely to be thinner than people who are not, Brubacker said.
Instead of phoning a co-worker, go down the hall to see them. Pick the farthest spot in the parking lot. Walk to the mail room. Take the stairs. Never sit in one place for more than an hour. Re-think how you get to work and consider biking or walking.
Walk with your co-workers around the parking deck at lunchtime. Deliver something in person instead of sending it by interoffice mail. Do lunges while you read e-mail, using soup cans as weights. Mydailyyoga.com has demonstrations of stretches you can do at your desk.
At home, see how fast you can clean your house. Dance with your kids. Ditch the riding mower in favor of a push one.
“Just do something that simple that’s going to add up,“ Brubacker said. “Seek ways to be active…. What we tend to do is kill ourselves with convenience.
“It doesn’t have to feel hard. But it shouldn’t feel light and easy. It’s more about the frequency and the duration.“
Dr. Heath Thornton, a family and sports-medicine physican at Work Forest University’s School of Medicine, suggests replacing your desk chair with an exercise ball. Start out by sitting on it for short periods of time, and then increase it. Sitting on the ball will help build up your core muscles in your mid-section.
You get similar benefit from sitting on a soft but solid pillow, Thornton said. “Basically, it’s taking you off your seat.“
Only three in 10 Americans get enough exercise, according to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.
Lack of time to exercise is the biggest complaint that Thorton hears from patients who need to be more active. He wants them to exercise. But he also wants them to start somewhere, so he talks to them about how to generally increase their activity.
Thornton will lead a seminar at BestHealth in Hanes Mall at 6:30 p.m. on May 28.
More far-sighted bosses might figure out ways to restructure office culture so employees aren’t sitting all day long.
Dr. James Levine, an endocrinologist with the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, redesigned his office so that he and his co-workers work at “vertical” desks attached to treadmills. During small group meetings, they walk around a track instead of sitting at a conference table.
Levine is well-known for his work in nonexercise activity thermogenesis - a fancy name for how people use energy through activities of daily life.
“It’s possible to build this activity back into our life. It doesn’t matter what activity we’re doing as long as we’re moving,“ Brubacker said. “We go from one seated position to another. We go from our desk to our car to our home. We just sit way too much.“
Fitting exercise into the nooks and crannies of time in your day has another benefit, Thorton said. It gets people thinking about ways to exercise for real. For some people, that can mean kayaking or mountain-biking instead of running on a treadmill at the gym.
“I try to tell people you have to find time,“ Thorton said, “because everyone is busy.“