Stand Up to Improve Metabolic Health

actvity exercise healthy metabolism Jan 13, 2023

If Sitting is as Unhealthy as Smoking, How do we Quit?

Stand up at least once every hour, and remain standing for at least one minute. Ideally, walking or doing air squats to activate your muscles during the one minute. Because when you activate your muscles, you keep the mitochondria in the muscle cells strong, which increases your metabolism's efficiency and overall health.

65% of Muscle is Below the Belt

Most of the body's muscle is in the legs, thighs, glutes, hamstrings, and calves. That's why maintaining a healthy metabolism requires the activation of the muscles in your lower body. And standing is the most basic way to activate the lower body's muscles.

Stand-up!

The target is to stand for at least one minute and ideally 3 minutes every hour. And while standing every hour will keep these muscles from hibernating, it won't keep them strong. That's why you need resistance training! Weight lifting will help you maintain muscle to slow aging and lower body fat.

Resist Aging

Resistance training is the best way to resist aging because it can slow the pace of sarcopenia, which is the loss of muscle tissue due to aging. We lose muscle as we age and instead gain fat; this changes the shape of our body and reduces the metabolic rate.

Sarcopenia starts in our 30s and continues at an average pace of 8% each decade. Once we are 80 years old, our body loses 34.1% of its muscle, almost 1/3 less! Weight lifting works to maintain muscle tissue and improve strength.

Lose Fat, Lift Weights

Yes, resistance training helps to lower body fat. You can do cardio to burn fat too, but weight lifting allows muscles to absorb glucose from the bloodstream and store it as glycogen to use later. If the muscles are inactive, excess glucose is stored as fat.

How Much & How Often?

The minimum effective dose is twice weekly, activating all the major muscle groups (listed in this blog post). A minimum of three sets of 8-15 repetitions. So, for example, if you're working biceps, you'll want to use a weight or resistance that will adequately challenge the muscle. I like to shoot for 12 repetitions of bicep curls and rest, 30 seconds to one minute between sets, repeating three times.

Learn More

Listen to Episode 6 of my podcast, Exercise: How to Kick-Start Your Metabolism, for more information on the benefits of exercise.

Ovvia Members, check out the Member's Video Library and watch the series about Exercise, WHY, and What & When to Exercise! So you can maximize your time spent and get the best results!