There are two kinds of sitting. There’s goodsitting, zazen, and there’s badsitting… i.e., at your desk, working like a slave for eight to ten hours a day to make ends meet in a crummy economy. When it’s crunchtime and you eat lunch at your desk, that cubicle starts to look like a veal fattening pen. And when you get home, you’re too exhausted to do anything but grab a pizza and a sixpack of beer for stress relief, and then repose gracefully on your ever reliable and accepting sofa, in front of the boob tube. If you get an occasional massage, and you might as well stick a sign on you that advertises American Kobe Beefcake.

Let’s start with the sitting. Here’s a compilation of studies that show just how horrible excessive sitting is for our health. From bio mechanical problems that lead to low back pain to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity…some day soon, all that sitting is going to catch up with you. When we were cavemen, we led an active life that allowed us to move  around for hours a day. Frankly, modern living is killing us and here’s some ammo for that argument:

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

So what can you do about it? What can you do to stop this one way conveyor belt to illness and an early death? Here are some suggestions:

• Start doing tai chi ch’uan and qigong, barefoot running, long distance biking, going for daily walks… anything to get your butt out of that chair and moving.
• Look into a vegan, raw or even paleo diet, to rebalance your diet.
• Have a bottle of water on your desk and sip from it every 10 minutes
• Get an exercise reminder app for your iPhone or PC – there’s a program for Windows called Break Reminder that monitors your keyboard and mouse activity, and if you’ve been working too long without a break it will actually turn the screen black and trap your mouse for five minutes so that you have no choice but to get up and walk around! On the Mac, try Dejal's Time Out... What's more, they're free!
• And here’s the best advice… get a standing desk.

It’s estimated that you’ll burn an additional 500 calories a day using a standing desk. More importantly, sitting shuts down the circulation of a fat-absorbing enzyme called lipase, so you start producing fat at an accelerated rate. Most people who switch to standing desks, after an initial period of adjustment, find that they have more energy during the work day. Thus, standing and walking may improve your cognitive function, so you don’t need that espresso in the afternoon.

Here are three places you can get an adjustable standing desk, so you can lower it when you have to:

• NewHeights™ Electric Sit to Stand Desk by RightAngle Products ($1149) - Electric height-adjustable bench with push button height adjustment control and optional wire management.
• GeekDesk™ Version 2.0 ($799) - Electric height-adjustable bench with programmable-height presets.
• Conset: 501-27 Electric Sit to Stand Desk ($750) - Electric height-adjustable bench.

One of the great things about a standing desk is that you can practice qigong at the desk!

Anyway, this is a start! Make a commitment to stop being sedentary!