How Often Should You Get Up from Your Desk

Your job requires you to sit with your laptop for multiple hours in a day. However, this sedentary lifestyle can lead to severe health problems, as explained by various studies. The unparalleled solution to this switching between standing and sitting. Still, how often should you get up from your desk?

In this article, you will get answers for the correct sitting and standing ratio. Additionally, you will learn about a few tips that will help you stand up at work and improve your lifestyle!

Why Switch Between Sitting and Standing?

While you may think you cannot opt-out of it, sitting down for extended periods leads to adverse health problems. Of course, sitting in itself is not harmful, but when you continue to sit for long, it causes severe muscle issues. That is because you are likely to slouch, lean back with a curved spine, bend your head, etc.

Even if you think you will make it up with the morning gym or evening exercise, TIME reports otherwise. Setting workout sessions apart, you need to switch between sitting and standing during your work hours to stay healthy. Moreover, research suggests that prolonged sitting periods increase the risk of death.

Benefits of Switching Between Sitting and Standing

Are you still confused about the constant conflict between sitting vs standing at work? Here are a few of the numerous benefits of switching positions between work!

1. Eliminates Body Stiffness and Pain

If you get a smart office desk, you will automatically maintain an ergonomic posture. You need not slouch or bend your neck when the screen is aligned with your eyes. Plus, switching positions will encourage muscle movement and eliminate body stiffness, while a straight spine will help reduce back pain.

2. Lowers Chances of Weight Gain

One of the key benefits of switching between sitting and standing is more standing time. Several studies explain that you can lose a few pounds if you stand for six hours a day instead of sitting. A sedentary position directly stores whatever you eat in the form of fats, while continuous standing uses these fats for energy.

3. Decreases the Risk of Health Issues

Whether or not you have severe health concerns like fluctuating blood sugar levels, cardiovascular problems, etc., switching positions is still beneficial. Standing between your work sessions can help lower your blood sugar level and reduce the risk of heart diseases and death. Whereas sitting for extended periods can severely increase these possibilities.

4. Increases Productivity

Another excellent benefit of changing positions while working is increasing productivity. Moreover, when you stand, your alertness level is comparatively higher, and thus, your concentration is automatically enhanced. Therefore, in the standing vs sitting office desk war, a standing desk certainly wins!

How Often You Should Stand At Work?

Now that you know about the significance of standing, the question is, how often should you stand up at work? The researched ratio for this lies between 1:1 to 1:3. That is between standing and sitting equal amounts to standing for 45 minutes every hour for an 8-hour day.

Though you got the answer of how often should you get up from your desk, it is not easy to follow. You cannot incorporate standing for so long in your routine. Well, here are a few tips to increase your standing duration while working.

Set Reminder

With your deadlines approaching, you often tend to overlook your health requirements. From eating on time and staying hydrated to moving your muscles—work can make you lose count of time. You can solve this by setting a reminder on your phone or computer for every 30 minutes.

With the reminder, you can go to take a 2-minute walk outside or fetch a glass of water. In this way, you will walk around for 10 minutes every hour. You can also set a reminder to switch your positions every short while.

Change Between Sitting and Standing

If you want to follow the standing rules, you can swap your position every 30 minutes. With a smart desk, you can seamlessly switch your positions between sitting and standing. It comes with an intelligent keypad that you can use to change the desk height. Moreover, the desk works with a dual-motor system.

You can save your desired desk height with its memory function and switch the adjustments in seconds. This will help you follow the 1:1 ratio of sitting vs. standing at work, letting you enjoy the benefits of standing.

Add Exercises To Your Working Routine

An excellent way to maintain a healthy work schedule is indulging in standing desk exercises. These are light exercises that help stretch out your muscles and burn a few calories, all from your desk. Moreover, you can also find a few exercises that you can do from your office chair itself.

Apart from this, adding office activities between your on-screen work is an efficient way of standing more often. These can be as simple as walking to the other end of the office to fetch your printouts. Also, you can move around more by visiting your colleague's desk for discussions instead of talking over messages or calls.

Wrap Up

How long should you stand per day? For an 8-hour long workday, you must stand for at least 4 to 6 hours. Does it sound too long? Once you get habitual of standing and moving around more, you will realize how easy it is. Moreover, standing at work has numerous health benefits.

In this article, you got answers to how often should you get up from your desk. Plus, you also got a hold of a few standing desk tips that will encourage movement while working.

So, follow these easy yet effective ways to indulge in a healthy working lifestyle!