The Sedentary Life

I am coming to find that part of my weight problem is directly related to my work.  Although I like my work, it is almost entirely sedentary.  I should have realized this when the job description warned that the physical ability requirement for the position was "to lift and move objects under 5 pounds."  Anyway, on Thursday I had to drive for eight hours to a town called Pocatello to do a little work.  The ride was long, and I kept thinking about how I had read an article about how you should really stand up and walk around for two minutes for every hour that you sit if you want to be healthy.  I thought about stopping ever hour to do this, but ended up driving four hours straight, sitting at a table for two hours, and then driving four hours back.  So, about 10 hours of pure sitting without really any movement. 

I think this qualifies as "sendentary behavior," as defined by Sedentary Behaviour Research Network (yes, there are people who actually make money studying how little we do).  According to "SBRN", sedentary behavior is "any waking behaviour characterized by an energy expenditure ≤1.5 METs while in a sitting or reclining posture."  A MET is basically (okay, very basically) the amount of energy you need to perform a specific task (technically, it is expressed as a ratio comparing the activity to a standard resting metabolic rate of 1.0).  Activities that fall at or just above 1.5 METs include:  dressing, grooming, having your hair cut or shampooed by someone else, placing food on a plate, talking, serving food, knitting, and wrapping presents.  Standing is 1.3 METs.  I couldn't even find anything for driving (though I did find out that it is 3.0 METs to drive a heavy tractor, but since I was driving a rented minivan, I don't think it was quite as much).  At first, I thought it would be about what having a hair cut would be like, but I always get nervous when I get my hair cut (people just don't know how to cut hair these days), so I am sure my metabolic rate goes up while I am trying to figure out how to fix whatever mistake the hairdresser has made.

Anyway, however many METs driving is, the fact is that I basically sat around in a vegetative state for 8 hours while driving.  Ironically, placing my dinner on a plate when I got home probably constituted a greater expenditure of METs than the eight hours of driving I did.