From the Washington Post:
Fidgeting Helps Separate the Lean From the Obese, Study Finds
It's a small study, but very interesting and encouraging in that it points to some easy systemic changes you can make.
Strolling to the bus stop, fidgeting during a meeting, standing up to stretch, jumping off the couch to change channels, and engaging in other minor physical activities can make the difference between being lean and obese, researchers reported yesterday.
The most detailed study ever conducted of mundane bodily movements found that obese people tend to be much less fidgety than lean people and spend at least two hours more each day just sitting still. The extra motion by lean people is enough to burn about 350 extra calories a day, which could add up to 10 to 30 pounds a year, the researchers found....
"The amount of this low-grade activity is so substantial that it could, in and of itself, account for obesity quite easily." ...
Other researchers agreed, saying the new study, while small, provides powerful new evidence that a major cause of the obesity epidemic is the pattern of desk jobs, car pools, suburban sprawl, and other environmental and lifestyle factors that discourage physical activity. And despite generations of parents' admonitions to the contrary, people should be encouraged to be fidgety.
"Figuring out ways to increase physical activity -- not necessarily getting people jogging every day but just building physical activity into a person's day -- are reasonable strategies that have the promise to combat this epidemic of obesity," said William Dietz of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta....
"We all know people who can't seem to stand still and others who hardly move," said Eric Ravussin of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., who wrote a commentary on the study. "This is really the first time this has been assessed in this level of detail."
For the study, Levine and his colleagues developed a system that can detect the smallest tap of a toe -- high-tech underwear resembling bicycle pants and sports bras or T-shirts embedded with sensors, originally designed for fighter jets, that take measurements every half-second....
Based on millions of bits of data, the researchers determined that each day, the lean subjects spent at least 150 more minutes moving in some way than the obese subjects.
Whoa! 150 minutes per day of low-grade exercise would definitely make a difference. What I like about this is -- if you're a little on the well-rounded side -- you can take some easy steps to get your ass in motion. You can park your car a little further down the street. You can take the worst parking places. You can take the stairs. You can hide the remote control. You can get a stand-up desk. You can take the chairs out of the conference room. This study shows that it may very well be worth the trouble to set up your life to simply maximize movement.
Just do it.
Thanks to Betsy.