Twenty minutes is all you need to kick death's ass …
Do you work hard for the money? So hard for the money? You work hard for the money and the weekend is the only thing that treats you right? So right?
For the love of health, stave off any inclination to be a lazy asshole on those few days off though, because a recent study suggests spending all that time 'not doin' a damn thing' at the end of the week is worse for your health than once thought; even more so than being stuck at a desk job all day during the workweek. Is nothing sacred in this world!?
Luckily, it's not like you have to go all Jillian Andrews everyday to keep yourself on par. While the scientists at University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C. did find that being inactive on the weekends increases the overall negative effects of being stagnant (because we tend to eat more and worse on those days off), only 20 minutes of movement on either day can counter-balance some of the poor behavior. So even doing commercial pushups every 20-second break between Netflix shows or going out for a walk in the morning/evenings has quantifiable impact on the way you'll end up looking and feeling — losing as much as 2 lbs or 1.6 percent body fat after a year.
"We know that, on average, people consume less or eat healthier diets on weekdays," explains study author Clemens Drenowatz. "So, they may be able to get by with less activity on weekdays because their diet makes up for it. On weekends, they're eating more, which requires more activity or less sedentary behavior to offset."
Researchers studied a group of 332 adults aged 20-35 using a device that measured inactivity over a 10-day period. Participants also reported their own inactivity and level of movement over the course of the study.
"From what we saw, the overall sedentary time wasn't different on weekdays versus weekends," Drenowatz says. "A lot of people had sedentary occupations, like office jobs, and they didn't really make up for that on the weekends either. This suggests diet is the reason, though obviously more research needs to be done."
So whether you're stuck behind a professional prison at work or make the conscious (or semi-conscious) decision to be a blubbering mass of flesh on the couch through your free time, growing research suggests that even menial movement throughout either is of a great benefit to your overall health.
Not afraid of cancer, mass shootings, car accidents or the sky falling down? Great, but they've got nothing on a lazy Sunday afternoon apparently. We're all doomed.
Leave a Reply