You may have heard the phrase “sitting is the new smoking”, and while the jury’s out on whether that’s accurate or not in terms of exactly how damaging it is, one thing that is universally agreed-upon is that sitting is indeed very bad.

It’s especially bad for your spine (because of being folded in ways it shouldn’t be), your muscles and associated nerves of the lower back and hip area, your abdominal organs (because of being compressed in ways they shouldn’t be), and your heart (because of arteries and veins being squashed up in ways they shouldn’t be), and if you remember how “what’s good for your heart is good for your brain”, the inverse is true, and what’s bad for your heart is also bad for your brain, which won’t get nourished with oxygen and nutrients and which won’t have its detritus removed as efficiently as it should; that’ll be left to build up in the brain instead.

First, elephant in the room: not everybody can stand, and of those who can, not everybody can stand for long. So obviously, work within what’s attainable for you.

Also note that while sitting is the disease-bringer/worsener, standing isn’t the only solution, for example:

• Walking is better than standing. You may be wondering: “who can’t stand but can walk?” and the answer is, a lot of people with certain kinds of chronic pain, for whom walking is less chronic-pain-exacerbating than standing, because the human body is built for movement and inactivity can worsen things even more than movement.
  • See also: Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically)
• Lying down is better than sitting. One of the major problems with sitting is that your organs are all bunched up in ways they shouldn’t be. Lying down is, in this regard, closer to standing than sitting, because your body has a nice straight line to it.
• Sitting can be made less bad! For example:
  • Sitting in a recliner chair in the reclined position is… Not great, if you’re then tilting your skull forwards to compensate, but if you’re just sitting back and relaxing, this is a lot better than sitting in the usual seated position, because again, it’s closer to lying down, which is closer to standing.
  • Sitting in seiza (the traditional Japanese kneeling position) is, provided you do it correctly and with good posture, better than sitting in the traditional Western manner. The reason for this is simple: instead of having your torso and legs at 90°, they are at 120°ish, give or take the size of your thighs and butt (bigger being better in this regard), and even that angle can be made even better if you use a meditation bench like this one ← we’re eyeballing it and didn’t get out a protractor, but if you look at the model’s torso and thighs, that’s about 135° difference, which is huge improvement over the 90° you get while sitting Western-style.

For most of us a lot of the time though, we can stand to sit less. Think about the places you most often sit, and what can be done to reasonably minimize those, for example:

• Car: minimize driving (or being a passenger in a car); walk where reasonably possible. Public transport, if available, may have standing options.
• Office: a standing desk is, of course, the way to go. You can even use a standing desk converter, like this one. Just make sure to set it at the correct height, both in terms of where the keyboard and mouse go (the same height as your elbows are when your arms are dropped to your sides), and where the monitor goes (center of the monitor should be at eye-level).
  • Note: laptops will never be right for this, unless the natural resting distance between your elbows and your eyes is about 4½ inches, which will only be the case if your total height is approximately 1 foot and 2 inches. For anyone taller than that, laptops are still great to have when on the move and as a backup, but not great for ergonomics.
  • Workaround: if for some reason you must use a laptop for your day-to-day work, consider using a bluetooth keyboard so that you can still set them the appropriate height-distance apart and thus not have to hunch over them.
• Dining room: sitting to eat a main meal is reasonable, but consider standing options for lighter bites; a standing-height “brunch bar” is great if you can arrange one.
• Lounge: let it live up to its name, and actually lounge: if you’re not going to stand, then horizontal lounging is an improvement over sitting—as is sitting on the floor, and changing your position frequently. Who knew, kids had it right in that regard!
  • Note: if, like this writer, you do a lot of reading, the same applies regardless of which room you’re doing it in.
• Bedroom: a culprit for many will be sitting while doing a beauty routine and/or possibly make-up. Easily avoided if you set a well-lit mirror at the correct height to use while standing.
  • Note: at the correct height though! While hunching up over a wall-mounted mirror is an improvement over hunching up at a seated vanity, it’s not a great improvement. You want to be able to stand with good posture and do it comfortably.
• Bathroom: leave your phone outside—which is also a good approach for avoiding hemorrhoids! See also: Half Of Americans Over 50 Have Hemorrhoids, But They Can Be Prevented!

Want to know more?

We reviewed this book recently, which goes into all of the above in much more detail than we have room for here, plus also discusses a lot of social reframes that can be used (since a lot of sitting is a matter of social expectations, not actual need). It’s a very useful read:

Death by Sitting: The Hidden Health Risks of a Sedentary Life and How to Stand Up for Your Well-Being – by Carolyne Thompson

Take care!

The famous answer: no

The truthful answer: yes, and we are doing it all the time whether we want to or not, so we might as well know what things affect our fat distribution in various body parts.

There’s a kernel of truth in the “no”, though, and where that comes from is that we cannot exclusively put fat on in a certain area only, and nor can we do “spot reduction”, i.e., intentionally lose fat from only one place.

How, then, do we do fat redistribution?

Your body is a living organism, not a statue

It’s easy to think “I’ve been carrying this fat in this place for 20 years”, but during that time the fat has been replaced several times and moved often; in fact, the cells containing the fat have even been replaced. Because: fat can seem like a substance that’s alien to your body because it doesn’t respond like muscles, isn’t controllable like muscles, doesn’t have the same sensibility as muscles, etc. But, every bit of fat stored in your body is stored inside a fat cell; it’s not one big unit of fat; it’s lots of tiny ones.

In reality, any given bit of fat on your body has probably been there for 18–24 months at most:

Fat turnover in obese slower than average

…and there are assorted factors that can modify the rate at which our body deals with fat storage:

Human white adipose tissue: A highly dynamic metabolic organ

So, how do I get rid of this tummy?

There are plenty of stories of people who try to lose weight from one part of their body, and lose it from somewhere else instead. Say, a person wants to lose weight from her hips, and with careful diet and exercise, she loses weight—by dropping a couple of bra cup sizes while keeping the hips.

So, we must figure out: why is fat stored in certain places? And the main driving factors are:

• hormones
• metabolic health
• stress

Hormones affect fat distribution insofar as estrogen and progesterone will favor the hips, thighs, butt, breasts, and testosterone will favor a more central (but still subcutaneous, not visceral) distribution. Additionally, estrogen and progesterone will favor a higher body fat percentage, while testosterone will favor a lower one.

This is particularly relevant later in life, when suddenly the hormone(s) you’ve been relying on to keep your shape, are now declining, meaning your shape does too. This goes for everyone regardless of sex.

See:

• What You Should Have Been Told About The Menopause Beforehand
• The BAT-pause! ← this is about the conversion of white adipose tissue to brown adipose tissue, and how estrogen helps this happen
• Topping Up Testosterone?

Metabolic health affects fat distribution insofar as poor metabolic health will result in more fat being stored in the viscera, rather than in the usual subcutaneous places. This is a serious health risk.

See: Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It

Stress affects fat distribution insofar as chronically elevated cortisol levels see more fat sent to the stomach, face, and neck. This fat redistribution isn’t dangerous itself, but it can be indicative of the chronic stress, which does pose more of a general threat to health.

See: Lower Your Cortisol! (Here’s Why & How)

What this means in practical terms

Assuming that you would like the fat distribution that says “this is a healthy woman” or “this is a healthy man”, respectively, then you might want to:

• Check your sex hormone levels and get them adjusted if appropriate
• Improve your overall metabolic health—without necessarily trying to lose weight, just, take care of your blood sugars for example, and they will take care of you in terms of fat storage.
• Manage your stress (which includes any stress you are experiencing about your body not being how you’d like it to be).

If you are doing these things, and you don’t have any major untreated medical abnormalities that affect these things, then your fat will go to the places generally considered healthiest.

Can we speed it up?

Yes, we can! Firstly, we can speed up our overall metabolism:

Let’s Burn! Metabolic Tweaks And Hacks

Secondly, we can encourage our body to “move” fat by intentionally “yo-yoing”, something usually considered bad in dieting when people just want to lose weight and instead are going up and down, but: if you lose weight healthily, it comes off everywhere evenly, and if you gain weight healthily, it goes mostly to the places where it should be.

So, a sequence of lose-gain-lose-gain might look like “lose a bit from everywhere, put it back in the good place, lose a bit more from everywhere, put it back in the good place”, etc.

So, you might want to gently cycle these a few months apart, for example:

How To Lose Fat (Healthily!) | How To Gain Fat (Healthily!)

You can also cheat a little, if it suits your purpose! By this we mean: if you’d like a little extra where you already have a little fat, then you can put muscle on underneath it, it will pad it up, and (because of the layer of actual fat on top) nobody will know the difference unless you flex it with their hand on it.

Let’s put it this way: people doing squats for a bubble-butt aren’t doing it to put on fat; they’re putting muscle on under the fat they have.

So, check out: How To Gain Muscle (Healthily!)

And finally, for all your body-sculpting needs, we present these excellent books:

Women’s Strength Training Anatomy Workouts – by Frédéric Delavier

Strength Training Anatomy (For Men) – by Frédéric Delavier

Enjoy!