Habit 1: Sit Less

At Sleekgeek we recognise that being sedentary (like sitting all day) and being physically inactive is a LOT more harmful than most people think.

Even if you workout at the gym for 1 hour a day, 7 days a week…

If you sit on your bum behind a computer, in the car, at the table, on the couch, or in your bed for the remaining 23 hours of your day then you are still sedentary!

The benefits of sitting less:

Healthline list some of the negatives of sitting too much and how it may be bad for your health.

However, at Sleekgeek we like to help people run towards their goals rather than away from their fears, so we’re going to reframe this list into the BENEFITS of sitting LESS:

• Sitting less makes weight loss easier and weight gain harder.

• Sitting less decreases the likelihood that you will be overweight or obese.

• Sitting less is linked to a longer life.

• Sitting less is linked to decreased risk for disease.

• Sitting less provides benefits that exercise cannot.

Take a moment to think about that.

Imagine there was a pill or supplement that you could take which would make weight loss easier, or decreased the chance of you being overweight in the future, or extended your life by several years, or reduced your risk for disease…

Whoever made that pill would be incredibly rich, right? Everyone would buy it!

But that’s what sitting less does! For free!

Remember: While exercising for an hour every day is fantastic, if you’re sitting or sleeping for the other 23 hours then you’re still sedentary and have a huge amount of benefit to gain from just sitting less.

Don’t trivialise this:

Despite how ridiculously simple sitting less seems, it’s clear that getting into the habit of sitting less can provide an ENORMOUS amount of benefit.

While sitting less may indeed be a “simple” thing to do…

It’s not an “easy” thing to do.

Just like how everyone clearly knows that vegetables are healthier than chocolate, it’s much easier said than done to eat the right things consistently.

This is because “knowing” and “doing” are two very different things.

• Knowing makes us feel good and productive, but it doesn’t move us fowards and can even hold us back when we get paralysed from overthinking things.

• Doing, on the otherhand, actually moves the needle. It moves you forwards and creates results. It has an impact.

We need both, that is true, but we only need a little bit of knowledge and then a lot of action.

We learn the most from actually doing, so the less you do the less you’ll actually know (as confusing as that may seem).

You don’t get to the “next level” without first mastering the basics.

At Sleekgeek we like to joke that the boring basics are actually the super duper next level secrets to success.

So, we’re going to help you break it down into more do-able and actionable parts.

Two-Part Habit:

• Part 1: Spend less time sitting in general.

• Part 2: Sit for shorter periods of time (stand up and move around regularly).

We recommend standing up and moving around for at least 1 minute every hour during the workday (and outside of that too if possible).

An easy way to raise your awareness around how much you are sitting versus standing and remove your excuses is to set a simple reminder on your phone to remind you to stand up.

Many smartwatches and fitness trackers have built-in monitors that track how much time you spend moving versus sitting and give you prompts to stand up and move around if you’re too sedentary.

If once an hour feels a bit much, you could always start with setting a reminder every 3 hours and then work your way to a more frequent reminder from there (until it’s a habit and you no longer need the reminder at all).

You will, of course, want to restrict these reminders to “waking hours” between say 8am and 9pm so that it doesn’t disturb your sleep.

Another thing that you can try is to stack standing up on top of another existing habit that you have. For example, you might decide that you have to stand up for at least 1 minute before you check your email at work or social media at home.

There’s nothing “wrong” with sitting:

After all of this, it’s worth us noting that there’s nothing actually wrong with sitting. It’s a normal human posture. Just like eating, it’s perfectly OK in moderation.

But sitting too long (just like eating too much) can start to cause problems.