Get out of your chair, exercise while you work

From heart disease to the flu, there’s very little of what ails you that regular exercise can’t help ward off. Except for the dangers of too much sitting.

Often referred to as the new smoking, sitting joins the ranks of bad habits that slowly whittle away at your health.

And like smoking, it’s not easy to cut back, especially when all your friends are sitters, you’re at a loss if you don’t have a television remote or mouse in your hand and work does nothing but feed your addiction.

Fortunately, the solution to too much sitting isn’t going cold turkey.

Cutting back by a few hours a day is enough to ward off the ill effects of rotating between your chair at work and your recliner at home.

What qualifies as a moderate amount of sitting? There’s no definitive answer, as diagnosing excessive sitting as a disease is still relatively new, but an Australian study claims spending 11 or more hours a day with your butt in a chair results in a significantly higher risk of mor- tality than sitting for just four hours a day. What’s more, a few hours of exercise a week doesn’t seem to substantially lower that risk.

Another study, this one done by a U.S. research duo, suggests that limiting sitting to three hours or less a day can add two years to your life.

If you do the math, that means more than half your workday should be spent somewhere other than in that expensive ergonomic office chair you bought to improve your health.

Fortunately, squelching the consequences of too much sitting doesn’t require anything as radical as jogging on the spot while you’re sending e-mail or practising yoga moves in between clients.

Here then are some ideas on how to stretch your legs at the office. Ditch your old desk One of the simplest ways to incorporate more movement in your workday is to use a desk that allows you to move easily from sitting to standing and vice versa. These small bursts of activity fire up your metabolic engine, which almost grinds to a halt during long periods of sitting.

Change how to do business

The practice of heading down the hall to talk to a co-worker or visiting a client at her office disappeared around the time e-mail and cellphones took over our lives.

But with the latest call to get out from behind our desk more often, it’s time to dredge up old habits.

Return one inter-office email an hour with a personal visit instead of giving your fingers a workout on the keyboard. Deskercise Before you scoff at the idea of performing a series of jumping jacks in front of your co-workers, deskercise doesn’t need to look like you lost your way to the gym. At its simplest, it’s nothing more than glorified fidgeting.

Standing up when the phone rings and pacing around your office space are good habits to get into. Walking meetings Admittedly, this suggestion takes a bit more of a culture change than flexing your muscles at your desk, but more people than you think will accept an offer of walking and talking at the same time.