++Sitting for too long is bad for your health. Here’s how to move your body throughout the day. +
++I am ashamed to admit how much time I spend sitting. One of the lucky workers with a computer job, I am planted in a chair for most of the day. As I write these words, I am — you guessed it — sitting. Save for my daily workouts and brief walks to and from my car or the bus (where I, again, sit) and friends’ homes or restaurants (where sitting once more occurs), the entirety of my day is spent seated. In my 20s, I never paid much attention to my sedentary habits. Now, a decade later, I feel the tension in my lower back and hips if I sit for too long. +
++I’m not the only one hopelessly devoted to the sit. American adults spend an average of 7.7 hours a day seated. Both prolonged sitting — extended, uninterrupted periods of time in a seat — and sedentary behaviors — tasks that expend extremely little energy, such as playing video games, watching television, using a computer, or reading a book — are linked to a number of negative health outcomes. Sedentary behavior increases your risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even early death. Sitting for long periods of time also ups your chances for blood clots, back and joint pain, weight gain, and cancer. +
++And regular physical activity does little to offset the negative impacts of prolonged sitting. Keith Diaz, an associate professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, says, “The muscles, it’s great for them to be active and stimulated really heavily and really hard for 30 minutes or 60 minutes, whatever you do for your exercise. But eventually they stop doing their job again when you don’t use them.” +
++When seated, leg muscles are in a shortened position, which can lead to stiffness, pain, and difficulty moving, says Scott Capozza, an oncology physical therapist at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale Cancer Center. “Also, if we’re sitting for longer periods of time, we’re not engaging in any kind of cardiovascular activity,” he adds. “So it’s not good for the heart, for the lungs, for our circulation.” +
++There is some good news, though: A 2023 study co-authored by Diaz found that just five minutes of light walking every half hour can help reduce some of these risks. There are also modifications for those with limited mobility or who use a wheelchair to get their movement breaks, experts say. In general, experts consider one hour to be the maximum amount of time people should spend sitting at any given time: In addition to the 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity physical activity recommended by the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, you should strive to get out of your seat at least once an hour to offset the negative effects of prolonged sitting. Here’s some expert-approved advice on how to do it. +
++How to remind yourself to move +
++Back-to-back Zoom meetings or highly engrossing media may keep you glued to your chair for hours at a time, sometimes without your noticing. In his 2023 study, Diaz found most participants simply forgot to stand. Many smartwatches and fitness trackers can display movement reminders, prompting users to get up after a certain length of time. If you don’t have one, Capozza recommends setting alarms or reminders on your phone for every 30 to 60 minutes or putting notes next to your computer screen reminding you to stand up. +
++Diaz suggests tying your movements to a routine. For those with many meetings, whether virtual or in person, use the end of each conversation as a cue to get some movement. Or after you complete a slide in the presentation you’re preparing, go for a short walk. Try swapping out your 40-ounce Stanley tumbler for a smaller water bottle that requires more refills — which means more visits to the kitchen. “When you tie it into your routines,” Diaz says, “that’s when it helps become more sustainable and becomes part of a habit you don’t have to rely on, like a reminder to do it.” +
++Your body gives the best signals for when you should move. Don’t ignore stiffness or lethargy or mistakenly consider muscle tightness a sign to continue resting — take it as a cue to move, Diaz says. +
++How to get more movement into your day +
++Once you’re out of your seat, there are a number of low-effort movements you can try. Whether you work in an office or at home, you can take trips to fill up your water bottle or to go to the bathroom. If you can, try to use the water fountain that’s farthest away from your desk or a bathroom that’s on another floor, Capozza suggests. To make the best use of phone time, take a walk or unload the dishwasher while on calls. (A headset or wireless headphones will save your neck and help with hands-free chatting.) Commuters can park at the back of the parking lot or get off public transit a stop or two early and walk the rest of the way to work if time and weather allow. +
++Walking meetings, while a relatively niche concept, encourage more movement throughout the workday, says Burton Cowgill, an adjunct associate professor of health policy and management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. However, these types of culture changes require buy-in from leadership, Cowgill says, to encourage less sedentary behavior. “We need to recognize that we are frequently in environments that may limit us by their rules [or] culture around doing that,” he says. “This is why it takes both support from leadership, management, institutions to allow employees, students, even patients in health care settings to engage in these activities of movement.” +
++If you’re in the middle seat on a plane or enrolled in a three-hour class with limited breaks, you can still move while seated. Fidgeting, tapping your toes, rolling your shoulders, doing seated heel raises and ankle rolls, and extending your legs can keep your joints limber, Cowgill and Capozza say. Other relatively easy movements you can do by your desk (or in front of the television) include mini squats in and out of your chair or wall push-ups. +
++People with limited mobility have options for interspersing movement in their day, too. If you are able to move your legs, you can try extending them a few times, marching in a seated position, or flexing your ankles, Capozza says. For upper-body movements, you can raise your arms above your head and to the side in the shape of a capital T and Y. Diaz recommends cycling or pumping your arms and using resistance bands. If you’re able, Diaz also suggests putting on music and dancing in whatever way is most comfortable for the duration of a song. +
++How long and how intensely you move makes a difference +
++Any amount of movement, even if it’s just standing and touching your toes, is preferable to sitting for long durations. However, Diaz and his colleagues found five minutes of low-intensity walking to be more effective at counteracting the negative effects of sitting than one minute of low-intensity walking. While he doesn’t have evidence yet, Diaz suspects moving for shorter durations at higher intensities may be as efficient as longer durations at lower intensities. “My hunch is that the one minute of moderate to vigorous [movement] is better than the one minute of light,” he says. “I would say if somebody only has a minute, go do something a little bit more intense.” Maybe that’s brisk walking or climbing up and down a set of stairs. +
++Those with schedules requiring them to sit for hours at a time — like truck or ride-hail drivers — should try to work in longer stretches of movement when they can, like doing housework or playing with kids at the end of the workday instead of heading for the couch. “If you had to sit in class for two hours,” Diaz says, “I’d go walk for 10 minutes afterward.” +
++When you are sitting, make sure you have good posture +
++During the times you are seated, proper alignment is crucial to avoid any neck or low back pain, Capozza says. Make sure your hips and pelvis are slightly above your knees. Your feet should be on the ground with equal weight distributed between both, meaning you don’t want one foot to be elevated on a stool or ledge. Make sure to keep your weight balanced between your pelvis and your feet to take pressure off your back. “You don’t want to be too far back in your chair so that more of your weight is on your pelvis and your hips,” Capozza says, “but you don’t want to be too far forward in your chair so that more and more weight is on your feet.” +
++Ensure your screen is at eye level so you’re looking straight ahead and not down. Capozza recommends sitting 18 to 24 inches away from your computer screen. Try not to slouch forward or raise your shoulders. +
++Don’t rush out to buy a standing desk, either: “We’re also seeing evidence that if you stand too long, you can develop issues,” Cowgill says. “It’s that balance of having a desk that you can adjust and doing some sitting, some standing throughout the day.” +
++Ideally, you should aim to move as much as possible during all of your waking hours, not just the workday, Diaz says, especially if you have a very sedentary job. However, as your day winds down, you can focus more on rest. “Our bodies need rest and recovery from stressful days,” Diaz says. “I love to sit down at the end of the day … just relaxing and watching Netflix. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. As long as I’ve made an effort throughout my day to be more active and take those movements, I don’t have to feel guilty at the end of the day.” +
++Republicans have launched an ill-informed campaign to blame diversity policies for aircraft safety issues. +
++The news cycle is awash with terrifying stories about air travel safety. At the start of the month, the door plug of a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew off mid-flight, leaving a gaping hole on the side of the Alaska Airlines plane. Over the weekend, another Boeing passenger jet’s nose wheel fell off just before the Delta flight took off. +
++While these incidents have reopened important conversations about outdated technology, workforce shortages, and the financial tradeoffs that airlines have made, right-wing pundits are claiming to have found the real source of the aviation industry’s troubles: DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. +
++According to these commentators, airlines hired certain workers solely to meet diversity goals and sacrificed their commitments to safety and quality in the process, despite the global conversation about airline safety that’s been underway for years following high-profile accidents. +
++Among them was Elon Musk, who took to his platform X after the Alaska Airlines incident to ask, “Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety? That is actually happening.” +
++He added, “People will die due to DEI.” +
++After news of the wheel flying off of the plane, the term “DEI” began to trend Tuesday. Donald Trump Jr. posted, “I’m sure this has nothing to do with mandated Diversity Equity and Inclusion practices in the airline industry!!!” Other users questioned whether Delta has “DEI quotas for their mechanics” and stated that “DEI practices are going to cause disasters” and that “DEI actually means DIE.” +
++Aviation experts have never cited DEI — programs that organizations have widely adopted to increase representation among underrepresented groups — as a cause of air safety problems. Various investigations point to a variety of other factors. One New York Times analysis stated that aircraft manufacturer Boeing, for example, “opted against adopting additional precautions and made decisions for the sake of saving money or raising profits.” After these latest incidents, airline executives are pressuring Boeing’s leadership to improve quality control and engineering. +
++Conservatives’ growing critiques of diversity efforts illustrate how they have turned DEI into their culture war’s newest bogeyman ahead of the 2024 general election. In the way that critical race theory became a catch-all target in 2021, DEI is the right’s new punching bag. In the last year alone, Republicans have blamed DEI for everything from the Silicon Valley Bank collapse and “failing” higher education institutions to antisemitism. Underneath the attack on DEI are racist, sexist, and anti-gay ideas that women, people of color, and those in the LGBTQ+ community do not have the qualifications, skills, or intelligence to participate in society through jobs, education, leadership, and more. +
++Now, these beliefs are being enshrined into laws that bar diversity programming and are motivating lawsuits that seek to punish organizations for diversifying their workforce. +
++Where did the link between DEI and airplanes come from? +
++Aviation has long been dominated by white men. United Airlines, for example, didn’t hire its first Black pilot until after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 2016, 18 Black pilots sued the airline over widespread racial discrimination at the company. Around that time, about 97 percent of pilots were white and only about 5 percent of commercial airline pilots were women, according to CBS News. +
++After the racial reckoning of 2020, airlines and aircraft manufacturers pledged to change their hiring practices to create more opportunities for qualified women and people of color. Boeing’s latest diversity data for 2020–2022 shows that the company is still short of its goals to hire more women and people of color. Racial and ethnic minorities make up 35 percent of engineers for commercial airlines, up from 32 percent in 2020. Women make up 17 percent of engineers at the company, up from 16.5 percent in 2020. +
++That these diversity efforts haven’t led to a notable shift in the company’s demographics casts doubt on the right-wing ideas that DEI is causing safety issues. +
++The connection being drawn between aviation troubles and DEI isn’t new. Former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson shared this line of thinking a year ago. +
++In a news segment from February 2023, Carlson focused on the 2019 crash of a jet that carried Amazon packages. Following the crash, it was revealed that the pilot, a Black man, had failed several training sessions but managed to withhold this information from his employer, Atlas Air. A National Transportation Safety Board investigation determined that the Federal Aviation Administration must devise a better system of logging airline pilot records. +
++Carlson seized on the incident in the segment, arguing that the pilot received the job despite “his obvious inability to fly an airplane,” ignoring the fact that the pilot intentionally lied about his credentials. +
++“Why was he flying an airplane?” Carlson asked. “All of the airlines are doing their best to hire and train pilots on the basis of irrelevant criteria like their appearance. And your appearance … has nothing to do with your ability to fly an airplane, or perform heart surgery or do anything. It’s immaterial. But on their websites, both Amazon and Atlas Air explain that diversity is paramount in everything they do.” +
++According to Carlson, “This is not an outlier … This is happening at every major carrier in the United States. Safety concerns ignored in favor of something called equity. Hiring by appearance, not by ability. This is insane. And in this case, it killed three people.” +
++Carlson blamed other accidents on what he called “diversity hires.” +
++“The airlines are in a mad scramble to meet equity targets, meaning they are pushing safety aside in favor of ideology. People will die. People have died.” His right-wing followers are now spreading this anti-DEI message far and wide. +
++The anti-DEI movement plays into tropes about the inferiority of marginalized groups +
++The moral panic surrounding DEI is the latest way that Republicans are undermining social justice progress. Criticism of DEI has emerged from all corners of the political spectrum, but instead of trying to unpack the ways that DEI has gone astray and remains underfunded, Republicans want to tear it down and suggest that policies that ignore race are the ideal. +
++The attack on DEI suggests that the marginalized groups these programs are supposed to help are undeserving of opportunities. It also suggests that people from marginalized groups lack merit and that hiring or admitting them into certain spaces will worsen outcomes for society. +
++During his X rant against DEI, Musk also replied to a post that suggested that students at historically Black colleges and universities have lower IQs and therefore shouldn’t become pilots. “It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE,” he replied. Similarly, conservatives went after the hiring of gay applicants. Chaya Raichik, behind the X account “Libs of TikTok,” complained that Alaska Airlines was jeopardizing passenger safety by setting diversity and inclusion goals and “making their planes gay.” +
++Conservatives have complained that higher education institutions also spend too much money on DEI, at risk to students. And they’ve turned their attention to the medical profession, too, claiming that medical schools are lowering their standards to let anyone be a physician. Critics made the same arguments against affirmative action, claiming that those hired or admitted through the initiative were unqualified. +
++“The newer attacks on DEI seem, to me, to be more in line with attacks on diversity in general, from the attacks on diversity in college admissions to the attacks on university presidents to the general whining about white men, in particular, not being hired, to the attacks around immigration,” Matthew Florence, a DEI consultant, told Rolling Stone. “It feels like an overall last-ditch effort to preserve a more white-centered United States culture.” +
++Republicans have made it clear that they are only just getting started in their campaign to roll back the very slow progress the country has made in confronting systemic injustice. States including Florida and Oklahoma are preventing some higher education institutions from using state funding to support DEI programs. Corporations are pulling back on their commitments to diverse workforces. The aviation industry is just the latest target in conservatives’ high-pressure effort to undermine multiracial democracy. +
++Don’t let climate doom win. +
++It’s no secret that the environmental health of the planet is in dire straits right now. The Earth was its hottest in recorded history in 2023. Our winters are shorter, our summers hotter, and our natural disasters more extreme. +
++The doom and gloom around climate change is understandable when you take it all into account. Global governments struggled to stay under the goal of 1.5 Celsius temperature increase last year, meaning we could be barreling toward even worse outcomes. There’s a sense of existential dread, a feeling that we’ve gone too far and that there’s no stopping the inevitable demise of Earth and all the creatures that inhabit it, including us. +
++But one expert says it doesn’t have to be that way. Hannah Ritchie — deputy editor at Our World in Data — argues that climate “doomerism” leads people astray from meaningful action. In her debut book, Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet, she says we should reframe the way we talk about climate change. Hope, informed by data, can be a helpful tool for mobilizing the masses, who range from climate deniers to the most devoted of environmentalists. +
++“I think tailoring messaging to different audiences is really, really crucial,” the Future Perfect 50 honoree says. “I think some people do actually just respond to the fear or the catastrophic messages. But I think there’s also a big group of people that don’t like that. I’m trying to bridge that ground a little bit and get people that might be on the fence or a bit disengaged to engage a bit more.” +
++In this episode of The Weeds, we sit down with Ritchie to discuss the current state of climate change, why the planet has actually never been “sustainable” for all of human history, and why shifting toward an optimistic (but realistic) narrative can help keep the planet from warming. +
++Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to The Weeds on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get podcasts. +
++Jonquilyn Hill +
++I want to get into something you spend time in the book discussing, and that’s what you consider ineffective policies like that around plastic straws, for instance. I’m curious why you think it’s ineffective, and also why there’s so much focus on these policies that aren’t maybe the most effective. +
++Hannah Ritchie +
++There are two reasons to counter some of the ineffective stuff. One is that some of this stuff that people think makes a positive difference actually makes a negative difference. We should just call that out. +
++But the other dimension to this is that people often become so overwhelmed with the number of decisions they should be making about environmental stuff. They go through their day questioning every little decision. That can become overwhelming. There are probably like five big decisions that make a big impact on your carbon footprint. Then the rest of the decisions really make very little difference at all, and you can do those if you want. +
++But there’s also this effect, which is called moral licensing, where if you have done a behavior that you think has made a positive difference, often you kind of let other things fall by the wayside. So you might think, “Oh, I used a paper straw at dinner. Therefore, it doesn’t matter that I take the car or I take the flight or I eat the meat because I’ve done my bit because I used a paper straw.” The impact of the paper straw is so incredibly small compared to the other decisions. +
++Jonquilyn Hill +
++What are some of those things that we think have a positive impact but actually are not helpful at all? +
++Hannah Ritchie +
++One that comes up a lot is local food. If you ask people, “What’s the best way to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet?” they’ll often say, “Eat local.” The rationale for that makes sense: Transporting stuff obviously emits CO2 emissions, whether on a truck or on a plane or by boat. +
++But the key thing when you break down the data on emissions from food is that what you’re eating matters more than how far it’s traveled to reach you. If you look at the carbon footprint of different foods across the world, the average percentage that the transport part makes up is just 5 percent. +
++Most of the impacts of your food are coming from a land use change, or they’re coming from emissions on the farm. You’ll often hear people say, “My local beef is obviously much lower carbon than your avocados shipped in from a given country.” And actually, that’s just not true. The beef versus the avocados matters much, much more than whether it’s local. +
++There are reasons why someone would want to eat local, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s just not necessarily the best way to reduce your carbon footprint. So if there’s other reasons to eat local, like supporting your local community, then go ahead and do that. +
++Jonquilyn Hill +
++What are some of the things we could be doing that are actually helpful? +
++Hannah Ritchie +
++It’s primarily about meat and dairy consumption. That’s probably the biggest part of your footprint there. And then food waste, those are like the two massive ones on food. +
++On energy, it’s largely about travel: walking, cycling, and public transport is best. If you have a car — if you need a car, then an electric car is definitely better than a [gas] car. And then in your home, it’s not necessarily stuff like your lights or plugging your phone charger, [but] often heating and cooking. +
++What’s really effective is an electric heat pump that tends to be much better than a boiler. And then putting in a solar panel on your roof massively reduces your energy footprint. +
++Jonquilyn Hill +
++It’s very easy to spiral when you think about the state that the world is in, and I’m wondering how you keep from spiraling. Because it’s very easy to start panicking. It’s understandable why the doom-and-gloom messaging takes over. +
++Hannah Ritchie +
++I’m definitely not saying that you’re going to be okay. It depends on what we do. +
++It’s not like we’re going to have no impact and things are all going to be fine. But the gradient of how okay things will be will depend on our actions. We have this opportunity here to really take strong action. +
++The balance there is really important. You do need to not necessarily panic, but you do need concern and you need a sense of urgency. It’s also important to focus on the solutions. If you just tell people this is a massive problem and leave them with it, what are they supposed to do with that? +
++I often try to highlight signs of progress, and that’s not necessarily to congratulate ourselves about how well we’ve done. But it’s all often about building momentum and showing people this can change. +
++Jonquilyn Hill +
++It’s this idea of celebrating small wins so that people don’t feel despondent. +
++Hannah Ritchie +
++You can relate it to even really small personal stuff in your own life, like, say, training for a marathon and you’ve never been a runner. The most demotivating thing ever is if you’ve been training for three months and you’ve made no progress. Then you just stop because you think, “I’ve been doing this for three months. I’m wasting my time. I’m just going to stop.” +
++If you’ve been training for three months, you’re not at the marathon-level standard. And that’s where we are on climate change. But you have gotten fitter over that period of time and you can now run a 10k. It’s about building on that momentum to say, “Okay, if I can build up to 10k, then with more training and with much more effort, then I can get to the marathon distance.” It’s about using momentum to drive more progress rather than just clapping and saying, “That’s kind of where we are.” +
++Jonquilyn Hill +
++I think for a lot of people who care about the environment, these small actions matter. It offers a sense of control in a world where so much feels out of our control. These are small steps that we can take without the backing of companies or federal governments. +
++What advice do you have for people who you know want to make a change but aren’t in power or don’t have proximity to power? +
++Hannah Ritchie +
++We often envision this as very top-down, but I think many of the successes on this have come from more community efforts. +
++[Efforts like] building wind power in Texas, for example, have come from small communities saying, “We’re going to build a wind farm for our community.” So often, it can start to come from the grassroots and build up. +
++There’s a lot of that in environmentalism where it’s often pointing fingers, and I think that’s really ineffective at getting people to change. But change in yourself can often be really infectious and people get interested. +
++Jonquilyn Hill +
++What do you think the role of optimism is in our climate future? +
++Hannah Ritchie +
++It needs to be balanced with a sense of urgency and the need to act. +
++A lot of people are feeling quite paralyzed at the moment. I think they are, in some sense, disengaging because they feel like we’re making no progress and we probably won’t make any progress. And this is such a critical time. We need to really get moving on this stuff. This is the worst time for people to disengage and look away. So, for me, the role of optimism is to drive people to actually take action. +