Regular exercise isn’t enough

Recently I’ve FINALLY made big progress with my ankle injury. I started walking with a local group and have been doing some private fitness training with an emphasis on core strength. I went from not being able to walk more than 30 minutes without my ankle swelling and becoming painful to being able to do an hour more of intense exercising. Yay!

However, I noticed that at the same time I started new exercise activities,  my small walking and stretching routines disappeared. I thought, this isn’t good. I want to have added to my exercise not replaced it. Then there’s the article I read at Lifehacker.com on how bad sitting all day (which my work requires) is for you. I basically knew that sitting is bad for your body and have tried to make sure I get daily exercise. And more recently I read that “sedentary time is closely associated with health risk regardless of how much physical activity you perform on a daily basis. Further, it is entirely possible to meet current physical activity guidelines while still being incredibly sedentary.”

So living what is considered an active lifestyle doesn’t make up for how bad prolonged sitting is for you — yikes! You have to do both – exercise regularly and make sure you aren’t sitting too long.

I’m alternating sitting on an exercise ball  (this time not a ball chair) sometimes instead of on my ergonomic desk chair.  I’m also trying to combat too much sitting is by using Break Pal which reminds me to take a break and provides short activities to do at my desk (both free and paid versions). Without a reminder it is easy for me to get lost in my work for hours. However, the days I don’t spend long uninterrupted hours in a chair, I can definitely tell the difference in how my body feels at the end of the day – and I don’t need a study to tell me that.