Is Standing Always Better Than Sitting?
If you think that standing instead of sitting is going to help with weight loss by burning more calories, think again. Investigators in the UK and U.S. found that standing at your desk burns only about 9 additional calories an hour, so few that it would take 20 hours of standing to burn off a medium latte. To find out how much energy (calories) you burn while standing at a height-adjustable workstation, the researchers first tested the resting metabolic rates of 46 healthy men and women and then determined how many calories they each burned while lying down, sitting or standing. The team concluded that reducing prolonged sitting by using a standing desk appears to increase the time spent standing by a maximum of two hours daily, which would burn fewer than 20 calories. While there are health benefits to standing more, they reported that losing weight is not necessarily one of them. For that, the researchers wrote, you have to focus on your diet and perform more physical activity.
Source:
James A. Betts et al, “The Energy Cost of Sitting versus Standing Naturally in Man.”Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, November 8, 2018, DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000001841
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