James Levine M.D. - Move a Little, Lose a Lot: Use N.E.A.T.* Science to: Burn 2,100 Calories a Week at the Office, Be Smarter in as Little as 3 Hours, Reduce Fatigue by 65%, Extend Your Lifespan by 4 Years

Sentenced to the Chair

H ave a seat. That used to be a polite invitation to take a load off your feet and rest awhile. But twenty years of researching the science of sitting has me thinking its high time we changed that polite invitation to Please, stand. Or Come, lets walk.

Sitting was once a break in a busy day. Now it is the singular way most of us spend our time. Take a moment to reflect on a typical day. How did you get to work? Like 98 percent of Americans, you probably either drove or sat on a bus, train, or subway car. If you work in an office, the rest of your day was likely spent chairbound at your desk, in endless meetings, or having lunch. What do you do after work? Sit down at the computer to pay some bills, shop online, catch up on e-mail? And after that? Maybe kick back and unwind with a few of your favorite shows?

Did you ever stop to think whether your body was equipped to sit for thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, or maybe more hours a day? Did you ever consider what happens to your heart, muscles, and metabolism that calorie-burning engine the fitness magazines are always advising us on how to rev up with green tea and exercise when you sit virtually immobile for more than 80 percent of your waking hours?

Most of us havent. We just accept it as the way it is. But we never stop to realize that its not the way its always been or, more important, the way it was meant to be. We dont realize how stunningly recent this all-day sitting lifestyle is or the disastrous consequences it has had in just one generations time.

Turn on some classic game shows like Lets Make a Deal from the late sixties and early seventies. Flip through some old photos from that time. Notice how practically skinny the average American looks compared to people today. Now flip on a football game or any show that provides a good wide-angle audience shot. Look at the general size difference from one generation to the next. The average American is 26 pounds heavier than they were back then. Two-thirds of us are now overweight. A third of us are obese. And we havent just been getting fatter. Weve been ballooning to proportions once rarely witnessed except in scientific journals. Since the 1980s, the number of people who are more than 100 pounds overweight has skyrocketed to 4 million one in every fifty adults more people than live in the entire state of Colorado. By the end of the decade one in two children will be overweight. The past twenty-five years have brought us to a tipping point where for the first time in the history of mankind our life span has actually started to decline despite all recent medical innovation and progress. Its a case of chair today, gone tomorrow.

If youre one of the majority of Americans who is overweight, you probably blame yourself for not exercising more or following the right diet. Why wouldnt you? Every magazine, infomercial, and weight-loss product sells special exercise plans and diets as the solution. Even the government spends millions of dollars promoting the diet and exercise message. Its not all bad, of course. But is it working?

Since 1972, when Dr. Atkins released his now-famous carb-eschewing opus, one big-name diet book after another has topped the charts. Atkins alone moved 45 million copies of his book during the past forty years. But are we any thinner? I have news for you: Theres strong evidence that our calorie consumption has actually gone down or at least changed minimally during the past twenty years, as obesity rates have doubled. We also continue pouring stunning amounts of time and money into the exercise side of the equation, also to no avail. Since 1987, the number of health clubs in the United States alone has grown 146 percent to nearly 30,000 nationwide, while the ranks of members have swelled 58 percent to nearly 43,000,000. The weight-loss industry stands to rake in $58.7 billion this year, according to Marketdata Enterprises, a market research company in Tampa, Florida.

So each year we spend the equivalent of the gross national product of Bangladesh on slimming solutions, and were still getting fatter. How much more money will we toss down this bottomless pit? How many more decades will we let this madness go on before we acknowledge that were going about it all wrong?

Diet and exercise dont work because they are unnatural. Selectively eliminating entire food groups from your diet or eating only grapefruit or some special soup or shake is completely out of whack with the way we are meant to live. Human beings are hardwired to eat to nourish ourselves, not to systematically deprive ourselves of sustenance. Thats why you can never stay on a diet, and why you regain weight the moment you go off. We have evolved to hunt and gather, sow and reap, and to spend the day burning thousands of calories through constant motion, not to run like mad on a treadmill for 20 to 30 minutes, burning maybe 200 calories, and then sit nearly motionless for the other 15 hours of our day burning next to nil. Thats why barely a quarter of the population regularly exercises, and why half of all people who embark on an exercise plan abandon it within six weeks. Were simply not engineered to live like that.