Researchers do the Math: 1 Hour of Exercise for 8 Hours of Sitting

Are you sitting down? Well stop, unless you want to end up having to exercise even more. A new study has apparently found that for every 8 hours of sitting, a person must counteract that with 1 hour of exercise.

This idea is based on research looking at about a million people from America, Europe and Australia. Norwegian researchers looked at the data of the subjects, all 45 year or older, and found that if you are spending four hours a day sitting, you need to counteract that with half an hour of exercise.

And of course, if you double the sitting, you need to double the exercise.

Does this mean you need an hour of high intensity exercise? Eh, it doesn’t seem so. Even brisk walking falls into the category of “exercise” for this hour. We would rather see your smiling face at Cardio High after an 8 hour sit, but it does have to be every day.

An hour might seem like quite a bit. But you can count walking the dog, dancing, raking leaves.

-Shane M.