How Much Exercise You Really Need After Sitting All Day

We all know the damage that sitting all day does to our bodies. And given that most of our jobs now revolve around the internet, there's kind of no escaping it. But as holistic family physician and osteopathic practitioner Tudor Marinescu, M.D., Ph.D., told Goop, "Ancestrally, our bodies are made to always be in motion — they are not meant to be static." So, how exactly do we reverse the damage we're doing to our bodies by sitting all day? Exercise, of course.

According to Ryan Johnson, co-founder of Homage, just 45 minutes of exercise per day is "definitely a great place to start." Explaining to Well+Good that it differs on a person by person basis, he continued, "For some, a better approach may be 60 minutes per 5 days a week... [but] what may be more important is what you do with that 45 or 60 minutes."

However, unfortunately, exercise alone isn't going to cut it.

To really ensure you counter the effects of sitting all day long, you also need to make some small changes throughout your working day. Noam Tamir, C.S.C.S., founder of TS Fitness in New York City, recommends investing in a standing desk. "A standing desk is also a good option as it will help you become more aware of your posture and engage your core muscles," he told SELF. 

Even just making an effort to stand up and move around every so often will make a difference. "If you break up prolonged sitting, you see a range of beneficial changes," Neville Owen, head of the Behavioural Epidemiology Laboratory at Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Australia told Financial Times. "Our working hypothesis is that in addition to making sure you do get physical activity every day, breaking up the time you spend sitting means you get sustained benefits over the whole day, because there is going to be some fading of benefits if you exercise in the morning and then sit all day." Up you get!