Sitting is the Smoking of our Generation

My husband sent me this post titled "Sitting is the Smoking of Our Generation" today that he read a few weeks ago. I feel feel disgusted with myself sitting here having read it. I started working a desk job for the Army in 2005. Eight years of sitting 40 hours per week, 24 weeks or so a year. 7,680 hours of this stretch of my life on my butt. And that doesn't even count all the other time I spend sitting at home watching TV, on the computer, eating meals etc. From the post, Nilofer Merchant states that the New York Times reported in a study, published last year in the journal Circulation that looked at nearly 9,000 Australians and found that for each additional hour of television a person sat and watched per day, the risk of dying rose by 11%. In that article, a doctor is quoted as saying that excessive sitting, which he defines as nine hours a day, is a lethal activity.

Her solution to the sitting crisis is to hike or walk for all her meetings! Brilliant. Exercising at work while being paid. Oh, if I could just convince all my coworkers here to do the same, what a positive difference that would make! Maybe I can convince them for at least one meeting a week. Baby steps right?  Or get a job again where I actually hike as part of my job. Yes, I had the dream job at one time working at an Environmental Consulting firm in Lexington KY called Third Rock Consultants.

Meanwhile, I need to get an exercise ball to sit on at the office and make myself walk around more often at least.  Anyone else have some tips of how I can get more exercise while at work? I am willing to try as many as possible!