Do you want to live longer and be healthier?
Then sit less than 3 hours a day – and when you do sit – sit with better posture.
Recent research shows that sitting for long periods of time is unhealthy and that sitting for fewer than 3 hours a day may add up to 2 years to your life.
A wave of new research indicates that sitting all day is actively damaging your health. By forcing a body designed for movement to hold a crushingly immobile position, sitting strains muscles, slows your metabolism, increases your risk of heart disease, and even shortens your life span. "Sitting is a health hazard on the order of smoking," says Marc Hamilton, PhD, a microbiologist at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
Wow!
From about the 1st grade on most US schools have kids sitting hours and hours a 
day. And often physical education or even outdoor recess time are among the first "extras" to go when budgets are tight.
[Or when we teach to the tests.]
Sitting badly
Sitting itself is a problem as our metabolism slows to a halt when we sit – and then most of us sit in bad positions posture-wise when we do sit.
Add to this that we sit more than 3 hours a day makes this sitting-issue a double-plus whammy.
Get out of your chair and move around! work while standing and when you sit:
Here is a better way to sit
For about the past year and a half, I’ve been on a slow journey toward better health/fitness, and my sedentary time was a huge eye opener. I have definitely increased my activity level during this time, but the reality is, there’s a lot of stuff I enjoy that is sedentary in nature–like working on the computer, watching TV, reading, writing. So, my compromise has been the addition of a stability ball to my living room. I still sit on my couch, of course (and with pretty poor posture, I’ll admit), but I also try to spend at least half my “sitting” time on the ball to add just a tiny bit of movement into that otherwise stationary time.
Thanks for the comment Cheri…I’ve had the opposite thing happen – went from very active to writing a lot and sitting more. Not good..and now that i am reading this research – I must return to more active. Like your idea of the ball – I need to put air in mine and start sitting on it again while watching TV. thanks for reminding me!!
Lynn
I sit A LOT – and on busy days when I am sat for hours on end, boy do I feel it. I do try to make a habit of getting up and walking around every couple of hours or my ankles swell up and I get pains in my lower back.
The research doesn’t surprise me, killing ourselves with excessive sitting!
Hi Jan and thanks for the comment. I too have been sitting too too much lately. I walk a lot but I sit more 🙂
Time for both of us to make big changes! OK????
Lynn