icon-account icon-glass

Popular Searches

Popular Products

The Lean Protein
Whey protein powder for weight-loss.

CATEGORIES

Is Sitting Down Really That Bad For You? The Risks

21st May 2021

Health Life

21st May 2021

By Beth Shelper

Sitting is one of the most frequent activities that we do in our day-to-day lives. In fact, we live in a world that surrounds us with a sea of chairs just tempting us to sit in, from the adjustable, swivel, chairs we sit in at work, to the recliner chairs we sit in at home, and everything in between.

We were not designed to be idle, and it can be bad for our health – a lot worse than you may have already thought, actually. Feel good hormones such as dopamine and serotonin are released through exercise, so a lack of exercise equates to a lack of dopamine and serotonin.

But I have a desk job!

Don’t panic, though, being inactive in a sedentary job is not a death sentence. So, all the office workers can now do that sigh of relief. But, if we do not do anything active for the long-term, then it can be. Whether the effects of a sedentary lifestyle are felt in 10 years or 50, the quality of your life is in the balance. We need to all get up and use the body we were given.

The risks of sitting

Calling them "risks" may sound pretty ominous, but sitting for too long really does carry risks. Sedentary lifestyle effects can be pretty nasty, and have been linked to suffering of serious health problems such as heart problems, physiological issues such as a bad back, and even mental health issues, staying still for too long really isn’t recommended.

Sitting for too long has even been dubbed “the new smoking”, which really puts these harmful effects into perspective.

Why should we stay active?

We all know how important it is to stay active to maintain a healthy lifestyle, but we thought it would be good to go into some detail around these risks. There are some proven correlations between the below health conditions and prolonged sitting:

Muscle maintenance

Sitting or lying down for too long can lead to muscle deterioration. Staying active keeps our muscles strong and fit, so we require exercise and regular movement to maintain our muscle mass.

Weight loss

It’s pretty simple really – the more we move, the more fat we burn. Staying active boosts your metabolism so if your fitness goal is to lose weight, make sure you’re moving around!

Posture problems

Sitting down for too long, or too often, can lead to some pretty bad posture problems – especially from an ill-fitting chair. Ensuring your chair is equipped with adequate back support is key.

Diabetes

So, do you see what we mean when we say the risks are serious? Don’t worry, here are 3 ways that teach us how to be more active:

Take microbreaks 

Do something every hour. Make this into a ritual.

Get up from your chair and move. You can connect it to something you already do regularly, like going to the bathroom or making a trip to the water cooler, or maybe making a snack. There are plenty of microbreak strategies that we find really helpful.

Microbreak techniques

One of our favourite microbreak techniques is The 52-17 Rule, but you can adjust this to work with your personal goals. This rule requires you to work, focussed for 52 minutes at a time, followed by a 17-minute break.

That may sound really long, and crazy specific, but we promise, 52 minutes is a great time for you to get in the zone – and once you’re in the zone, this time will fly by. Then, you’re met with your 17 minute microbreak, where you can get up and move around – that even gives you enough time to fit in a quick HIIT workout or two, if you fancy.

Pomodoro technique

Perhaps the most famous microbreak strategy, the Pomodoro technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo. It involves using a timer to track your work and breaks. A Pomodoro lasts 25 minutes, which was carefully devised to ensure you do not procrastinate due to the urgency of the task. Following this 25 minute break, you can take a 5 minute breather. Every 4 Pomodoro’s, you get a longer 30 minute break.

This technique is great as the longer break gives you a substantial amount of time to get your body moving. Go on a walk, a quick cycle or even a dance around your living room – the choice is yours!

Forest

One of our favourite ways to manage these breaks is through time-keeping apps such as Forest. The idea behind the app is simple and effective – when you need to focus, plant a tree in your forest. Depending on your level of experience with the app, this tree could be a simple Fir tree, to a beautiful Japanese blossom tree.

Set a timer and stay focused until your time is up – a break in concentration means your tree will die! The great thing about this concept is that Forest can also be added as an extension to your web browser. When your tree is planted, get up, grab that cup of tea and have a 5 minute breather outside. You earned it.

Increase non exercise activity  

Despite what your guilt may be telling you - you don’t need to go to the gym to be active. Increase your movement throughout the day – whether big or small, these all make a difference in the long run.

Evaluate your own situation and find ways that you can increase your daily activity. You could try things like parking further away from work, taking the stairs and wearing comfortable shoes so you can walk or stand more, and these are all great options. 

Stand up whenever you can 

Make your existing tasks more mobile. For example, If you take lots of calls, don't sit at your desk; use a headset or speakerphone and pace around or stand for every call. 

If you’re looking to make a real change, there are also some pretty nifty standing desks, with some even having built in timers. These help you change your working position often so that you don’t do damage to your posture or sit for extended periods of time. Check out these  by Yo-Yo Desk. It’s pretty cool.

Summary

The benefits of staying active are endless, so it’s important that we stay mindful throughout the day. For many of us, sitting at a desk from 9-5, with a commute both sides and a pretty comfortable sofa at home means that we are sat down for a huge majority of the day.

So it’s time to make conscious choices around staying active. A great way to get yourself motivated to move and exercise is The Fit Protein. This protein blend is packed with proteins and minerals to boost your energy and get you going, whilst supporting repair and recovery on your fitness journey. So, if you’ve been sat down for way too long, remember – microbreak!

< Older post Newer post >

Product Spotlight

The front of The Fit Protein packaging.

The Fit Protein
Our Innermost The Fit Protein is formulated to boost energy, and accelerate muscle repair and recovery. Containing 31g of protein and 144 calories per serving.
New Vegan Formula

Need Expert Advice?

Take the quiz

Take the quiz

If you're not sure where to start, take our 5 minute health consultation to get product recommendations tailored to your goals.
Read more

Other Insights

The Glow Blend: A Confession

The Glow Blend: A Confession

I need to tell you something I've never said publicly, and it's not flattering. When our product team first brought me a plan for a collagen supplement, my honest reaction was no. Not "let me think about it." A flat no. And if I'm being fully honest about why, it wasn't the science. It was that collagen felt, in my head, like a beauty category. Something for someone else's brand. Not ours. I built Innermost around performance and evidence. Protein, creatine, mushrooms, electrolytes. Things I could point to a study for and feel comfortable talking about at a dinner table full of people who workout regularly. Collagen sat in a different mental folder. Skincare aisle. Jars with gold lids and brand sponsorship by one of the Kardashians. I'd absorbed a version of what "beauty" meant without ever examining it. The argument in the room So we had the argument internally. A proper one. A few people on the team pushed back hard, and rightly so. One of them put it to me plainly: we started Innermost to follow the evidence wherever it goes, not to follow it everywhere except the places that feel awkward. That line stuck with me. Here's what changed my mind, and it wasn't a feeling. It was the research. What the evidence actually says Collagen is the most abundant protein in your body. It's structural, it's in your skin, your joints, your gut lining, and production declines steadily from your mid-twenties onward. That's not a marketing claim, that's basic physiology. The question was never whether collagen matters. It was whether supplementing it actually does anything, and that's where most of the category falls apart. Most collagen products on the market use whole collagen molecules, which are too large to be absorbed effectively when you drink them. The ones that do use hydrolysed peptides, which are broken down into smaller chains your body can actually take up, still run into a second problem: dose. A lot of labels list collagen content that sits well below the 2 to 10 grams used in the trials that show measurable effects on skin elasticity and hydration. You're paying for a placebo with good branding. The ingredient most brands leave out The third problem is the one that convinced me completely. Vitamin C isn't a nice-to-have alongside collagen. It's a required co-factor for your body to actually synthesise collagen at the cellular level. Without adequate vitamin C, the enzymes responsible for stabilising collagen structure don't function properly. You can take a perfectly dosed hydrolysed peptide and still get a fraction of the benefit if the product doesn't include enough vitamin C alongside it. Most don't. They sell you the raw material and leave out the one thing your body needs to use it. Once I saw the category clearly, laid out like that, the decision stopped being about how I felt and started being about what the evidence supported. That's the whole operating principle of Innermost. I couldn't defend saying no to a legitimate, well-evidenced product category. What we built So we built The Glow Blend properly. Hydrolysed collagen peptides at a dose that reflects the research, alongside vitamin C, hyaluronic acid for hydration, biotin and folic acid for hair and nail health. Nothing in it that doesn't earn its place. What surprised me after launch The part I didn't expect was the response once we launched it. A good number of the messages came from women, as you'd expect, and they were generous and specific about what they'd noticed. But a surprising number came from men. Customers writing in to say they'd felt exactly what I'd felt, that awkward little flinch at "collagen," and had quietly bought it anyway because the ingredient breakdown made sense to them. That response told me more about why this category needed an honest voice in it than any research paper did. I'm not going to pretend I have this fully figured out. I still catch myself, occasionally, hesitating slightly before I mention it in a room. Old habits sit deeper than good evidence sometimes. But I take it, and increasingly a lot of men I respect take it too, quietly, without needing to make a thing of it. If this sounds familiar If any part of this resonated, and you've felt that same small resistance to a category you assumed wasn't for you, hit reply and tell me. I'd genuinely like to know I'm not the only one who had to get over it. And if you know someone, a friend, a partner, who could use this exact reasoning rather than a tesimonial, forward it on. It might do more good coming from someone else's honesty.
Read more
Your Summer Survival Kit (From Someone Who Travels A Lot)

Your Summer Survival Kit (From Someone Who Travels A Lot)

I'm putting the finishing touches to this post from an airport, which feels appropriate. By my count, I'll be going through three countries in the next six weeks. Meetings, a trip to see family including my niece and nephew, a supplier visit in Italy that I've been putting off for a year. And every summer the same thing happens. The carefully built routine, the one that took months to lock in, gets thrown into a suitcase and I hope for the best. Most people react to this by either giving up on the routine entirely ("I'll sort it out when I'm back") or overpacking so aggressively that half of it never leaves the bag. I've done both. Neither works. What actually works is deciding, in advance, which two or three things earn a place in my bag and which ones can wait until September. So here's mine. Not a wellness influencer's "what's in my bag" video. An honest list, built over about a decade of getting this wrong first. Why travel breaks routines specifically It's worth being precise about what actually changes when you travel, because it isn't just "less discipline." Three things shift at once. You sweat more and drink less water than usual, because you're distracted or the flight dried you out or the hotel room is warmer than home. You're outdoors more, often somewhere sunnier than wherever you live. And your meals stop being yours. You eat what's available, when it's available, and protein is usually the first thing to slip, because sugar, carbs and fat are what's on offer at 6am airport cafes. None of this is a discipline problem. It's an environment problem. The fix is making sure two or three specific things are in my bag before I leave home, so I’m not relying on willpower to begin with. 1. Electrolytes, non-negotiable Most people remember to pack sunscreen. Almost nobody packs electrolytes, and it's the one that actually catches up with you. Water replaces volume, not what you lose through sweat, which is mostly sodium and potassium and magnesium doing the quiet work of keeping muscles firing and fluid balanced properly. Miss that balance for a few days in the heat and you get the symptoms everyone blames on jet lag: the headache, the flat energy, the slight fog by 4pm that a coffee doesn't fix. It's usually not jet lag. It's electrolytes. I take The Hydrate Blend  for exactly this reason. Six electrolytes, no sugar, no synthetic flavouring, dissolves in a bottle of water in about ten seconds. One sachet on a travel day, first thing in the morning, does more for how I feel by evening than anything else in the bag. 2. Something for the sun you're actually going to get Here's the part most people don't think about until it's too late. UV exposure accelerates collagen breakdown, which is a slightly clinical way of saying that a week of proper sun does more to skin structure than most of the year combined. This isn't about vanity. It's a straightforward mechanism: UV generates free radicals that degrade existing collagen faster than your body can replace it. Sunscreen protects against the burn. It doesn't do anything for the collagen you're losing underneath. I've been taking The Glow Blend through summer for this reason specifically. Hydrolysed collagen peptides paired with vitamin C, which matters because vitamin C is a required co-factor for collagen synthesis and most collagen products leave it out entirely, then wonder why customers don't notice anything. It won't undo a week in the sun. It gives your skin something to rebuild with while it's under more pressure than usual. 3. Protein, especially when the meals aren't yours This is the one I've learned the hard way. When your diet goes inconsistent, protein is usually the first macronutrient to drop, simply because it's the hardest to find on the move. Airport food, hotel breakfasts, whatever's left at a conference buffet by 1pm, none of it is built around protein. And the honest science here is less dramatic than people expect: you don't need to train harder to maintain muscle through a disrupted period, you need to keep protein intake somewhere close to normal. That's the whole trick. I'll say this honestly because I'd rather be straight with you than pretend otherwise: my go-to for this is still The Strong Protein (whey based) and The Health Protein (vegan). They earn their place in my bag because they travel well, mix with nothing but water, and does the one job that actually matters on the road, which is making sure protein doesn't disappear from your day just because your routine has. The actual point None of this is about maintaining perfect discipline on holiday. Nobody does that, and if a brand tells you they do, they're not being honest with you. It's about deciding in advance which three or four things matter enough to bring, so the choice isn't being made for you by whatever's in the hotel minibar. If you've got a system that works for you when you travel, reply and tell me. I read every one of these, and I'm always looking to steal a better idea for my next trip. If this is useful, forward it to whoever in your life is about to live out of a suitcase for the next few weeks. It's the email I wish someone had sent me a decade ago.
Read more