If Sitting Is The New Smoking, Is Your Office Job Slowly Killing You?
As a species, we may not smoke as much anymore, but by god we do a lot of sitting. Which begs the question: If sitting is the new smoking, is your office job slowly killing you?
It appears desk jockeys, keyboard knights, and office workers throughout the land can no longer gorge on their steak pies, cream cakes, salty snacks, and lap up their fizzy drinks and sugary tea in peace, and why?
Because sitting is the new smoking, and the constant grazing and vacant browsing of the web, which fuels the daily grind in various white collar industries the world over is just aggravating the situation.
Too much sitting is believed to increase the risk of developing diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. And as sedentary behavior dominates modern life in the same way puffing on a cigarette did in the last century, it appears no one is immune, especially the humble office worker.
So much so that adults are being advised to limit their daily sitting time in favor of regular physical activity.
Yet the labored grunt and groan required to meet the excessive working demands of yet another day at the office can zap a person’s energy and take the lead out of your pencil. So much so that apparently one in 10 desk jockeys have not taken any real physical exercise for over a decade.
Now for those of you who dig ditches or line dance for a living, you’re probably wondering what’s so taxing and strenuous about pen pushing, paper shuffling, making pointless phone calls and starring at a computer screen all day long?
Well nothing initially, but in general terms, the office environment has long been renowned for its air of general malaise and atmosphere of oppressed discontent. To put it bluntly, these dark satanic mills are pretty much hot beds of thwarted ambition and existential despair, which all conspire to create a fertile breeding ground for a deep-rooted physical apathy and all consuming fatigue.
Even if sitting is not the new smoking, when you’re sat on your butt for most of the day in an over-heated, windowless and claustrophobic room, exposed to a radioactive computer screen and the inane chit chat and body emissions of fellow workers, it’s going to take its toll.
The question is do you go gently into that not-so-good night or do you swim against the tide?
It’s all too easy to blithely say sitting is the new smoking and blame long working hours on your pork belly, lardy ass, and double chins as they wobble gently in the breeze, but how many people in this day and age follow simple but effective exercise routines such as walking to and from work, or even going for a walk, or for that matter even leaving the building on their lunch break?
As a nation, we thrive on excuses, and you’ll always hear the collective whine of people churning out reasons why they can’t find the time to go for a brisk half an hour strut everyday on their lunch break.
Yet, amazingly, these same overworked tools and office hogs always find the necessary time to crunch, rustle, and munch their way through packet after packet of saturated fat as they fill their gluttonous faces with potato and grease and find out just what they’ve been missing on Facebook for large chunks of their busy day.
How often do you hear someone dozy spanner pipe up ruefully, “I wish I was lucky enough to live nearer to work so I could walk in every day.” They don’t. they’re just deluding themselves and making enough excuses so they can justify yet another visit to KFC for their daily bucket.
Same goes for the slothful types who lament they haven’t got enough time to visit the gym after work. You have, you just can’t be bothered because the office, much like a bureaucratic vampire, has bled you dry, so at least be honest about it.
Although when it comes to gyms, why any right-minded person would want to spend their free time in these temples of high artifice, rubbing shoulders with body fascists and the intellectually incontinent when you can achieve the exact same, if not better results by just stepping outside, breathing in the air, and listening to the birds sing, is a mystery in itself.
It’s true, sitting is the new smoking, and people are working longer hours, which is turning them into the equivalent of a battery hen or prize turkey, but your office job is not killing you. Your health and future are in your own hands. If people as a whole grew more of a backbone, then just perhaps, they’d have a lot less belly.
Office workers everywhere! You’ve had your cake, now jog on and get fit!
[Lead photo By China Photos/Getty Images]
