According to Mark E. Benden, PhD, CPE in his book “Could You Stand to Lose“, if you intermittently stand during the course of your normal workday routine for only two-and-a-half hours, you could burn an extra 350 calories per day. So yes, you can stand to lose weight at work!

Over 400,000 people died in the U.S. in 2006 from obesity related disease. According to research by MetLife, the CDC and the American College of Cardiology, three key conditions linked to obesity – diabetes, arthritis and heart disease – cost employers more than $200 billion annually in medical care and lost productivity.

Health care costs in the United States are rapidly rising, and the costs employers incur from these increases are growing as well. Obese workers cost companies ten times the number of lost work days and health care dollars when compared to their normal weight peers. One of the largest cost reduction strategies facing companies today is managing the increasing cost of overweight employees.

Since most people struggle with adding exercise to their daily routines Mark E. Benden, PhD, CPE was led to develop a new way of thinking to combat this epidemic with the simple addition of increasing movement in the average workday. By adding only two-and-a-half hours of standing to an employee’s workday, 350 extra calories are burned per day, resulting in a 20 pound weight loss in one year.

Lose Weight at Work

Some of the points that you will learn in Could You Stand to Lose are that standing burns 40 percent more calories than sitting, which translates to weight loss for a 175 pound person in the following way:

• Standing for 2.5 hours each day would result in an extra energy expenditure of 350 calories per day.
• It takes 3,500 calories to equal 1 pound of weight loss
• Ten days of 350 calories per day equal 1 pound of weight loss
• There are 250 working days in a year or the potential for 20-25 pounds of weight loss by adopting this method of working.

So what are you waiting for? Get up!