The slightly mis-named blog Obesity Panacea has put up the opening post in a week-long series on Sedentary Physiology. Good blog. Written for normal people, and covers the intersection between body weight, fitness, and health, from a what-does-the-research-say perspective. Where “what the research says” is still a developing topic.
From a homeschooling perspective, the opening article validates one of my reasons-I-like-homeschooling: School kids sit still an awful lot. And that doesn’t strike me as all that healthy. Referring here to the school schedule as it stands today, where kids spend more hours per day and days per year in class than they did in early years of public/town schooling. It’s not a contrast of home-versus-school anywhere and everywhere, but homeschooling versus how school is being done right now. No reason the school situation can’t change.
–> And in my neck of the woods, no one is walking five miles each way, either. Or even half a mile. When a new school was built by MIL’s house recently, within ball-throwing-distance of five or six neighborhoods, the road was rebuilt and expanded to handle the car traffic, but no sidewalk or crosswalk to be seen. (In my case it wouldn’t help though — we live half a block from our nearest school, and must-drive distance to the next two options. So the commute wouldn’t increase my kids’ exercise amounts.)
Funny story: This past Saturday at the “ADVENTure” parish program, by midday I had a kid ask if he could please stand through our class period, because he was “tired of sitting”. I let him stand up front, near me, where he wouldn’t block anybody’s view. Worked great. He was calm and not distracting and both of us were happy.
More personal: Wow has it been annoying dealing with the new sedentary lifestyle of the foot injury. Even with eating much less. I remember the same problem when I went from grad school to working full-time as an accountant. All that sitting. Not easy to keep a body healthy that way.
