Have you ever wondered why your smart watch tells you to move every hour? It is of course trying to increase your physically activity levels but, more importantly, it’s trying to break up the periods of time you spend sedentary.

Sedentary behaviour is any time that you spend sitting, reclining or lying down (aside from when you’re asleep). This can include the time you spend sitting at your desk, in the car, watching TV or reading, along with many other periods of time in your day. It’s important that both children and adults try and reduce their sedentary time.

Sedentary behaviour is often misunderstood and seen as simply being physically inactive, but it’s actually possible and fairly common to be a physically active individual but also be sedentary. You might meet and even exceed the recommended minimum guidelines for the amount of physical activity you do. However, if you complete this all in one go and then spend large periods of time at your desk or in your car, you are also very sedentary.

Why is it important?

So, what are the consequences of prolonged periods of sedentary behaviour? Research suggests it can:

• Slow down your metabolism
• Increase the risk of developing some cancers
• Increase the risk of heart disease
• Increase the risk of anxiety and depression
• Reduce your sleep duration
• Increase the risk of type 2 diabetes

The Chief Medical Officer’s guidelines for physical activity state that all age groups should try to minimise the amount of time spent sedentary each day. However, life typically revolves around sedentary behaviours due to the nature of a lot of office-based working, sedentary modes of travel and an increase in sedentary hobbies such as screen time, (watching TV, playing computer games, using your phone etc.).

Research suggests that both the total amount of time you spend sedentary each day, and the duration of each block of sedentary behaviour has an impact. So, whilst the ultimate goal is to reduce overall sitting time, breaking up the blocks of time we spend sitting with short bursts of movement, could also have an impact on our health outcomes.

What we mean by this is that instead of sitting at your desk for 8 hours in one big block, try to get up and move around every 45 minutes or so to split the big block into multiple smaller blocks. This way, while you’ll still be spending nearly the same amount of time each day being sedentary, you will still be taking lots of small ‘movement breaks’ that can lead to health benefits.

Why not try…

There are lots of things you can do to break up your sedentary time:

• Take a lunchtime walk
• Get up to put the kettle on or refill your drink
• Stand up and do a few stretches
• Go for a walk up and down the stairs
• Stand up and work for a few minutes
• Walk around whilst you’re on a phone call

It is important to note that while these activities are beneficial to your health because they’re breaking up your sedentary time, most of them don’t count towards the recommended amount of physical activity guidelines. This is because most of these activities are categorised as ‘light activity’ and the guidelines from the age of 5 and above only include moderate to vigorous physical activity.

Making sure you are meeting the guidelines for physical activity as well as reducing the overall time and the periods of time you spend sedentary will help to improve your health and wellbeing.

So the next time your watch buzzes or you realise you’ve been sat down for a while, what are you going to do to break up your sedentary time?

Want to learn more about improving your health and wellbeing?