The One Thing You Must Avoid if You Want to Lose Fat…
And No it’s Not Sugar
by Shin Ohtake creator of Max Workouts

There are many little things you can do to help improve your health and fitness. And I’m not talking about just exercising and eating well…that’s a given. I’m talking about small simple things, like taking the stairs instead of the escalator, or getting off the bus one stop earlier and walking the rest of the way to work.

Just simple things that take a little extra effort on your part, but it adds up to a lot, especially if you keep doing them on a regular basis.

Well, just as important, there are little things that you need to avoid, that can add up to a whole lot of bad. I’m not talking about things like avoiding sugars or fried foods. I’m talking about even simpler things that can amount to a profound difference.

Well, there’s one thing in particular that you need to avoid and it’s quite easy to do. The remarkable thing about it, is that studies have indicated that avoiding this one simple thing can help protect you from heart disease, help you burn more fat and increase your health and promote longevity. As they say it’s the little things that count!

Relatively speaking, it takes a while to gain weight and lose that lean, fit body you used to have. Those love handles and belly fat doesn’t come overnight. It’s a cookie here and an extra beer there. Just a little bit at a time and before you know it…one day you wake up and look at yourself in the mirror and you don’t recognize the person staring back at you. The lean and fit replaced by the soft and plump. How can I gain all this weight? And the truth is it takes months, if not years for you to actually get this way. You just don’t think about it, because in your mind nothing’s really changed. And nothing significant has changed…it’s just an accumulation of little things. Little things like sitting. Maybe you sit at work a little longer, maybe you commute a little longer, which means you sit in your car, bus or the train a little longer, maybe you sit a little longer watching TV. Whatever the reason may be, just sitting 2 - 2.5 hours longer each day can add up to a difference between being overweight and not being overweight. At least, that is according to a study done by the Endocrine Research Unit from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN.

Here’s what the study said.

Obesity occurs when energy intake exceeds energy expenditure. Humans expend energy through purposeful exercise and through changes in posture and movement that are associated with the routines of daily life [called nonexercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT)]. To examine NEAT’s role in obesity, we recruited 10 lean and 10 mildly obese sedentary volunteers and measured their body postures and movements every half-second for 10 days. Obese individuals were seated, on average, 2 hours longer per day than lean individuals. Posture allocation did not change when the obese individuals lost weight or when lean individuals gained weight, suggesting that it is biologically determined. If obese individuals adopted the NEAT-enhanced behaviors of their lean counterparts, they might expend an additional 350 calories (kcal) per day.

During the study, all the people involved were fed meals prepared by the clinic in order to maintain their current weight. Each meal consisted of 45% carbohydrates, 35% fat and 20% protein. All people involved were asked to maintain their normal daily activities. So everything was identical between the overweight group and the lean group, except for their daily normal activities levels or NEAT.

NEAT, which stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis, is the energy expended throughout the day outside of purposeful activities like exercising. This means standing, walking and anything that involves some type of voluntary muscle activation. So technically, everything but sitting and sleeping is NEAT.

It’s amazing to think that just 2 hours of sitting a day can add up to so much. And really, 2 hours isn’t much if you break it down through out the entire day. That’s like an extra 15 minutes of sitting to and from work, which is an additional 30 minutes. Add to that, an additional 1 hour of work…and maybe an additional 30 minutes of sitting in front of the TV winding down after a long day at work. And there you have it, an additional 2 hours of being seated or 350 calories less that you expend.

350 calories a day…that’s 2450 calories a week or 10500 calories a month. There’s 3500 calories per pound of fat, which means if you’re expending 350 calories less per day, it’s equivalent to gaining 1 pound of fat every 10 days. And if you keep it up, that’s 126000 less calories you burn per year or 36 pounds of fat you gain in one year! Assuming everything else is kept even, you’re looking at an ever expanding waistline.

These statistics go beyond just gaining weight as well. Other studies have indicated that the more you sit the higher your chances are of getting serious diseases like diabetes, metabolic syndrome and heart disease.

The truth of the matter is that many of these extended sitting time, may be out of your control. If you commute long distances, that’s something you can’t change. You may not be able to change the long hours you work or the number of hours you spend sitting in airplanes traveling for work. But what you can change is everything outside of that. And the easiest and most effective place to start is by standing for longer periods of time. Yep, you heard it right…standing! I know it sounds odd, to think that standing makes any difference at all but hey…did you think that sitting 2 hours more per day would make you fat?

Here’s an interesting study done on lipoprotein lipase in rats. LPL is a fat burning enzyme that helps dictate whether fat is deposited in your body or not. According to this study, muscle inactivity suppresses lipoprotein lipase, but light voluntary muscle contractions like standing activates it. So essentially, by sitting you’re not only expending less calories, but you’re also stopping the fat burning process at the same time…talk about a double whammy!

Another study suggests that standing should be promoted in order to combat obesity. Here’s their reasoning:

Obese individuals appear to exhibit an innate tendency to be seated for 2.5 hours per day more than sedentary lean counterparts. If obese individuals were to adopt the lean “NEAT-o-type,” they could potentially expend an additional 350 kcal per day. Obesity was rare a century ago and the human genotype has not changed over that time. Thus, the obesity epidemic may reflect the emergence of a chair-enticing environment to which those with an innate tendency to sit, did so, and became obese. To reverse obesity, we need to develop individual strategies to promote standing and ambulating time by 2.5 hours per day and also re-engineer our work, school, and home environments to render active living the option of choice

Definitely an interesting perspective. I never thought of anyone having an innate tendency to sit. But it does make sense. I think being inactive perpetuates more sedentary behavior and so being active should (theoretically) promote more active behavior. And so from that perspective, standing can promote less sedentary lifestyles and increase NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) so that people can expend additional calories through out the day.

There’s another important benefit to standing as well…and that’s posture and preventing low back pain. I’ve mentioned in the past article about the negative effects of sitting on your low back, and by avoiding excessive lumbar flexion (bending of your low back) from sitting, you can significantly reduce the incidences of low back pain.

So by implementing standing more often, you can help maintain a healthy weight while preventing unnecessary low back pain. Not bad for something so easy.

So how can you implement more standing in your day?

The easiest way is to stand at work. I personally stand when I work. I find it extremely beneficial for my posture, low back and it gives me energy. It prevents me from slumping forward and falling asleep. If you can change up your work station so you can stand when you work…it would be very beneficial.

Now, if that’s not possible, then make sure to include frequent mini breaks at work so you can stand up and walk around as often as possible. The more you can be upright on your feet, the better it is for your weight and health.

Another thing that you may want to do, is to stand more at home. You can stand and work on your computer to answer emails, pay bills and even hang out and chat with your family. You can stand by the kitchen counter talking or drinking tea while enjoying the company of your friend and family.

You can also minimize TV time. Nowadays, watching TV’s mostly a waste of time anyways. Instead, do something more active like going for walks or I’ve even recommended doing a gentle stretching exercises or easy yoga movements to help your body wind down after a long day at work. And, if you have a favorite TV show that you can’t go without, you can always Tivo it (or use any other commercial free recording mediums) and watch it in less time, so you don’t have to literally waste your time sitting through commercials.

Lastly, as I stated in the beginning of this article, if you want to effectively lose weight…along with your daily workouts and your healthy eating, try and include as much walking into your day as you can. Take the stairs instead of the elevator, or perhaps you can walk to do your errands, or arrive at work 10 minutes earlier so you can walk around the block a couple of times before going in. There are plenty of ways to implement walking into your daily routine.

So here’s a summary of what you can do, to effectively help increase your calorie burn, lose weight and achieve better health.

•Minimize sitting. The less you sit the better off you’ll be, to keep weight off, prevent low back pain and maintain optimum health.

•Replace sitting by standing. Even light muscle contractions like standing can activate fat burning enzymes and help burn more fat. If you can stand at work, even better.

•Walk as often as possible. If there’s an opportunity to walk during the day…do it. The more you can walk the higher your NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) and the faster you’ll lose weight, as well as helping prevent serious diseases like diabetes and heart disease

Shin Ohtake is the author of the world-famous fitness program, MAX Workouts. To learn more about how you can get ultra lean and toned with shorter workouts, visit http://www.MaxWorkouts.com

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