I'm compelled to get up and walk around, climb the stairs, stretch. On a nice day, I find it particularly difficult to stay seated. I have fantasized often, but obviously without imagination, about a work station that requires me to stand. As I became one with my chair this morning, I had an AHA!! moment induced by this New York Times Magazine article. It's all about the effects of exercise on weight. It concludes:
In a completed but unpublished study conducted in his energy-metabolism lab, Braun and his colleagues had a group of volunteers spend an entire day sitting. If they needed to visit the bathroom or any other location, they spun over in a wheelchair. Meanwhile, in a second session, the same volunteers stood all day, “not doing anything in particular,” Braun says, “just standing.” The difference in energy expenditure was remarkable, representing “hundreds of calories,” Braun says, but with no increase among the upright in their blood levels of ghrelin or other appetite hormones. Standing, for both men and women, burned multiple calories but did not ignite hunger. One thing is going to become clear in the coming years, Braun says: if you want to lose weight, you don’t necessarily have to go for a long run. “Just get rid of your chair.”
YES! I shoved my chair aside and bolted for a bookcase full of little-used tomes. My keyboard now sits atop three generations of the Atlas of Oregon, a picture book entitled Tibet, and my son Quinn's master's thesis. My mouse roams over History of Art, Macmillan's Illustrated Animal Encyclopedia, and Bill Moyers' World of Ideas. How to Write a Nonfiction Book Proposal and Ghostwriting for Fun & Profit prop my computer screen at the appropriate angle. I have been standing for nearly five hours. I am so happy! Perhaps the ever-resourceful PK will look upon my improvised "stand and deliver" space and rush out to his workshop to whip up something more aesthetically pleasing. Til then, it's me and the books.
