TN50 #57, Active Couch Potato? 31 January 2022

Hi Team,

Happy Monday and welcome to The Next 50 #57.  This is another quick hit on you taking inventory on you.  We recently touched on getting early morning sun exposure, for your Sleep.  Then hit on getting enough protein in your diet for maintaining or gaining muscle, for your Eat.  Today we will touch on the fact that a one-hour workout won’t make up for 12 hours of sitting if that is what makes up the rest of your waking hours.  Obviously, this is touching on your Move.

Are you kicking ass at an early morning CrossFit Class 5 or 6 days a week but spending almost all your time sitting otherwise? You know I love me some CrossFit (sidenote: I am still a current L2 CrossFit Coach!) but it isn’t enough movement to keep you from an early grave.  Here is nice encapsulation from Kelly Starrett in his book, Deskbound,

“Many studies are also demonstrating that the effects of long-term sitting aren’t reversible through exercise and other good habits.  This means tha if you eat well and work out religiously for an hour a day, but then sit for all or most of your other waking hours, the sitting behavior will chip away or even cancel out the benefits of all your exercise at the gym.  You are still considered a sedentary person.” (Starrett, first page of the Introduction)

Now don’t get me wrong starting the day with a great workout is a winner for sure you just have to add moving regularly through-out the rest of your day to capitalize on all that early morning effort.  One thing I do is to use a stand-up desk 95% of the time.  I also walk away from my desk, generally more than once an hour (sidenote: having a puppy makes this really easy!).  If I have a call that lasts an hour or so I move locations at least 3 times during that call, if I don’t have a requirement to take notes I will walk around on my calls.  These are all really easy ways to get a lot more movement during my day.

If you want to get some other perspectives on this cut and paste the following in your web browser:

How often should you get up and move from sitting

As always, please share your thoughts and share this with your team or anyone who might find it useful.

Have a good one, Alex

2022 Murph Count: 30