Take a Seat. Or Maybe Not.
It may or may not surprise you to learn that many Australians (and many people from most first-world countries for that matter) spend somewhere in the vicinity of twenty-two to twenty-three hours per day either sitting or lying. That’s 91.5 – 96% of their (our) time not moving. There’s a terrifying and fat-producing thought!
Think about it: the majority of us spend somewhere around six to eight hours in bed each night. Then we wake up, walk to the kitchen table and sit for breakfast. Not long after that, many of us take a seated trip to work. Followed by some quality sitting at work. Which, of course, is broken up with some sitting in a different place for lunch. After a day of sitting at work, the majority of us then head home – in a seated position. And while a minority will head to the gym or some other place to crack a sweat, a much larger percentage will head home. And when I say home, I really mean the couch – because we’re so tired from our big day at work. Then after we’ve recovered a little on the couch, we’ll make our way to the dinner table. To sit. And then back to the couch. And the cycle continues…
*Of course, the above ‘story’ is not true for many people (stay at home parents, manual workers, tradespeople, athletes, etc.) but sadly, it is a scenario that’s becoming more and more common – for more and more people – by the year.
Despite what many people think, in 2011 the average person doesn’t actually consume a lot more calories than his or her grandparents did forty or fifty years ago. Some suggest that the figure is about five percent more. What we do do however, (so to speak) is move less.
A lot less.
The Energy-Preserving Generation
We’ve become a nation of statues. Slow-moving creatures hell-bent on preserving energy and avoiding anything that might require an increase in heart rate. Some of us, anyway. Take a look around. We now have an ever-increasing range of jobs which require almost no physical effort. We have automated, systemised and computerised ourselves all the way to Fat City with the net result being more obesity, more weight, less muscle, less fitness, poorer health, increased postural problems, more back pain and overall, greater risk of illness and disease.
Other than that, we’re just terrific. 
And while we’ve made our companies perform more efficiently and effectively, we’ve done the opposite to our bodies. Not only do we expend less energy when we’re working but we now also expend less energy when we’re not at work. Along with a massive decline in our levels of occupational activity (calories burned at work) we’ve also seen incidental activity levels go through the floor. The average Aussie expends around 6,000 less calories per week than great-great (great?) Grandma did a century (or so) ago.
Back in the day (you remember the day) we walked places. Lots of places. Long distances. With our very own legs. We mowed grass, raked leaves and tended to our gardens. Unassisted. We lifted stuff and moved things with our very own muscles. And we didn’t fall apart.
Our bodies were surprisingly supple, strong, healthy and functional even though we’d never used a treadmill, picked up a dumbbell or been to a Pilates class. And despite the fact that we knew nothing about target heart-rates or progressive overload and had never laid eyes on fat-burners, protein bars or sports drinks, we somehow survived. Quite well, actually. We built stuff with our own hands. We dug holes and fixed broken fences. We played football on the street and raced billy carts down hills and nobody called the cops. We played games that didn’t involve computers, TVs or anything with the letter ‘X’ in it. We climbed trees and nobody died, nobody got sued and we made friends along the way – real friends, not the Facebook kind.
Then we got clever.
We created a world geared towards moving less. 
* Don’t forget my new kid’s book (The Angry Ant) is out now! Love this article? Sign up for my FREE Email Newsletter today to receive more articles like this, and get my FREE Ebook!
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I’m holding steady on 10 -12,000 steps a day. What would you recomend Craig?
Great article and sadly all too true
You’re right about moving too little, but at the same time compared with my great-great-grandmother, Hannah-Ellen (photos show she was a battle-axe, but she had a hard life), I live like a royal (princess?) and I’m thankful. Maybe when you had a family of 16 children and had to wash all their clothes by hand, prepare their meals from scratch, and keep your house clean with no electricity or cleaning products, you were fit, but I think you were probably also exhausted a lot of the time. And the men had it even worse, in my family most worked down the mines – lots of physical exercise, but lots of injury too and illness like COPD.
This is a great kick in the rear for me~I’ve been sloppin’ along for too long, expecting it not to have an adverse effect on me! I’m excited to get back on the right track. Thanks for all the great articles~I read them all, even the ones with the photos of scantily-clad perfect- bodied folk. That pic didn’t offend~it made me wish I looked like her!
Sitting all day is the reason why the explosion of diabetes !
So Agree with you – the modern life just gets faster & faster and I fell into that mode without realising for about 3 months when I started working in the city. A couple of kilo’s later was a wake up call so needed to be creative and fit mobility into the working day – I now get off the train and walk 50 mins into work making it part of a normal day – and the Kilo;s fell off in a couple of weeks – can’t recommend walking enough -gives great thinking time before my day starts also
)
So True Craig we are a Nation and world that wants to kill ourselves. We pay money to loose weight when half of the world are dying from starvation, we light up neon lights with ‘marketing’ logos then cry we have no power, we kill our creatures for fashion and wonder why the eco system doesnt work, we then create products that kill our protective layer to address this whilst we cut cancer out of our bodies, we drill holes in our world and then scream when cyclones come rushing through… When will we stop killing ourselves with greed and selfishess?
Remote controls have a lot to answer for. In ‘the day’ garage doors, for example, were two heavy hinged wooden structures, which had to be opened individually (after manually opening the driveway gates), and then closed after the car was driven in (followed by closing the gates). All the doors of the car were then individually locked.
If you extrapolate this to all sorts of common activities, it’s no wonder we’re all prone to lots of preventable diseases.
Craig, you have inspired me to add a lot more movement to my daily activities. As I work from home in a job that requires sitting (you can’t sew while using a treadmill, unfortunately!), I have fallen into the trap you were talking about. No more! Thanks for the reminder.
I couldn’t agree more. I come from Africa. Need I say more. I’ve also been a long distance runner for 30 years. Even so, the sloth enabling culture of the First World makes staying in shape hard work. When I return to Africa I am shocked and embarrassed at our culture of excess and how we enable ourselves to do nothing.
Hi Craig,
At the moment I have your book Stop F*cking around on my bedside table to help motivate me to haul my booty out of bed and keep going with the Challenge of the C25k program. Week 2, Day 3, today I had the whole mental argument going with myself to not get up, get up, not get up, get up! The book was almost glaring at me as well with the words “GET UNCOMFORTABLE” almost yelling at me. Now I read this article and I am glad that I got up and that I am making a positive change and conscious decision to move more. I feel better when I get back from the run. Well temporarily I feel like crap and my face is bright red, but later the feeling is almost euphoric and I can’t wait to do it again. Now I supplement the 3 day C25k program with walking in the days between.
Great article as usual Craig. Hope you are well.
Big Hug.
Jackie
x
A little bit off topic, but I love your expressions to the workout act: raise a sweat, crack a sweat. They’ve been my motto to go to the gym ever since I read them. Made my gym hours funnier.
Thanks! =)
I see no reason why we cannot enjoy the fruits of our labour and have an easier life than our parents. I am though reminded of a great song by Bruce Springsteen “With every wish, there comes a curse.”
My Dad has two less fingers, he is deaf, and has a dodgy shoulder and wrists. He worked hard at work and at home. His wish was for his kids to go to Uni (all three did) and have easier lives (all three have).
There are people I work with in my office who are really overweight and there are others, like me, who are fit.
It is not our lifestyle of ease that causes this problem, it is the fact that some people consider that life is determined for them and others who accept that life is self determining. Those in the former category do nothing to help themselves. Those in the latter category do everything to help themselves.
Wish to your hearts content for an easy life for it is what we deserve. But we need to take responsibility for our choices. When we choose to pick up one end of the stick we choose to pick up the other end.
We have to be careful what we wish for don’t we. We wanted easy and we got it. Now if we had wanted to be healthy things would be very different. We want to sit back, relax and eat easy food [take away].
Our great success is that now we have created a world that is easy. Unfortunately everything comes at a price and that is the problem.
For all the good stuff there is an equal and opposite downside. Life was never really meant to be easy it was just our dream to make it so.
Now if we all wanted to be fit,active and healthy we could achieve that too. The cost is comfort and convenience as in there won’t be much! Nah its too hard, we dont really want it that much anyway – do we??.
I am certainly aware that the more sedentry my job has gotten, in turn my down time also has become sedentry.
Wait.. did you hear that? Yep, my arse just got a little bit bigger! *screams*
OK, that was me up until January. Since the start of this year I’ve taken up Derby (want a good workout? Strap on some skates. Trust me.) started working with a trainer and added some TAFE on top of things just so the mind doesn’t get lazy either. Most nights I don’t get home until after 8pm. I’m exhausted.
Chatting with my Mum recently I asked her how her days was. Her reply? “Oh, I got up before 6 (am) and went to the gym, came home and fed the horses, put some mulch down on the front garden bed, dug out the potato patch, planted my seedlings, turned the compost and repaired the raised vege bed… it just needed a new piece of wood (she uses recycled railway sleepers!!) and the loaded the extra horse feed into the shed.”
I just want to add that my Mum is 61 and is fitter than I am at 31. She is certainly built of much tougher stuff than I.
When I grow up, I want to be just like my mum.
Hi Craig,
‘Tis hard to disagree with your overall theme here. Maybe some more exercise between the ears may educate the masses to get off their butts. Though it is fair to say that there are so many sporting endeavours being undertaken by everyday people these days viz, triathlons, fun runs, endurance/ironman/woman events. I can remember jogging with my Dad as a youngster in the ’60′s & being pointed/laughed at……..because no one “jogged” in those days….before fun runs, tri’s etc.,(it was way before “cool”)
Be good to yourself
David
Laziness is a state of mind that can be changed. I can’t stand sitting for long periods of time. I like to be moving except of course when I am on the computer or driving.
Ummmm……………I’m in the minority here gladly!
Alarm goes off at 5am these days which is later than it used to. Then it’s the obivious, – wash face in cold water, apply light makeup and sunscreen, get dressed etc, then head out for brekkie which I make and try to clean out. Then try and take out as much rubbish as poss and walk to bus which I catch at 5.50am. Then it’s a sedentary 50 odd mins on bus, then a 5 min charge to work, then coffee, then I’m charging around like a mad thing for at least 8 hours, (but if it’s not completed in 8 hours it’s longer) at work. Hospitality, food, and moving fast and bending, lifting in all sorts of positions at work at least 8 hours a day. Lunch break is a scramble. We are entitled to half an hour daily but ya know, if many customers come or we get late orders we are under pressure and taking a break is least of our worries. We are entitled to it and boss sure wouldn’t dream to argue if we took it………….but ya know, we want to make sure we do our best to help when needed and judge the situation on the day.
The point of this is…………………I’m sure hospitality and manual labourors still almost work their arses off along with some other professions! Attempting to hit gym or intense cardio after a bit work day for me is challenging for sure!
Yes I agree totally. I would dearly love my employer (govt) to provide me with a desk I can raise so i have to stand at it. And even better a treadmill so I can exercise behind it. But given our budget cuts I can’t see it happening. And I bet there’s something in Occ Health and Safety that would prohibit me doing it.
Yes I run, I gym and I walk during the day but I see the studies that say even an hour or two a day of exercise doesn’t compensate for the time spent sitting.
Yes you are right. We actually dont get time for physical exercise nowadays for lack of time and for that we are getting lazy day by day which is affecting our health very badly .probably unknowingly we are doing harm of our health
Throw away your television!
I did, and although I watch TV online (ABC iview is awesome) I see it as more of a conscious and conscientious decision rather than a time filler. I watch programs because I’m interested not because I’m bored.
Got off my bum, joined a women’s outdoor fitness group (Booty Camp!) and have lost 6.5 kilos. Not bad for a foodie!
Unfortunately, I have my first proper injury (hip/lower back) and am coming to terms with eating less food rather than simply working out harder. There is so much to learn and so much of the mind to overcome!
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