DNY59/iStock(NEW YORK) — Sitting all day has been proven to be detrimental to one’s health — so if you’ve got one of those standing desks, great.
However, if you think standing up at the old grind is going to get you shredded, you may want to sit down for this: A new U.K. study shows you’ll burn fewer than 10 calories an hour.
So standing for an entire eight-hour day will offset your morning coffee — provide you take it with no cream or sugar.
“The very small increase in energy cost of standing compared to sitting that we observed suggests that replacing time spent sitting with time spent standing is unlikely to influence our waistlines in any meaningful way,” says study co-author Dr. Javier Gonzalez, a senior lecturer with Bath’s Department of Health.
Scientists tested dozens of men and women, checking how many calories they burned sitting, laying down, or standing during an average day. The difference between sitting and standing only worked out to be around a 12 percent difference.
Gregg Afman, a professor of kinesiology, noted that, “current interventions to reduce prolonged sitting like standing desks or wearable technologies only increase standing by a maximum of two hours per day…” — which works out to be around 20 calories in a given day.
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