Knowing When to Let Go: Toxic Relationship with Your Office Chair

by Ben Goodman ***

We are often warned about staying away from toxic relationships. Your friends warn you about staying in an unhealthy relationship and your parents warn you about hanging out with the “wrong people”.But more often than not, very few people warn us about being in a harmful relationship with our work – more specifically, sitting for long hours in your office chairs.

Looking at it from a wider perspective, sitting for long hours is a lot like being in a toxic relationship. It sometimes feels good but when the pain hits, it hits hard (not to mention that its negative effects can be long term).

Pains of Sitting

Sitting has been considered by experts as the new smoking. Its effects have been found to affect a person physically and emotionally. According to The University of Arizona Health and Sciences, some of the most known effects of sitting for long hours include (1) obesity (2) heart disease (3) feelings of stress and unhappiness (4) loss of muscle mass and (6) shortening of life span.

Sitting for long hours has been proven to make fat easier to accumulate and muscles mass easier to lose even with regular exercise. It was also proven to increase the risk of dying by 25 to 45 percent compared to people who only sit for a couple of hours every day.

Your relationship with your office chair is, in short, full of red flags that if goes unnoticed, can be detrimental to your health. While nobody has been found to die solely because of too much sitting, it can aggravate what existing health issues you might have and weaken your overall wellness.

Fixing the Problems

There is nothing wrong about sitting in front of your desk in the office. You’re getting paid for working, and sitting comes along as both a reward and a consequence of having a desk job. However, just because sitting is part of being a desk employee doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do to fight its negative effects.

Actually, it only takes a little patience and consistency. Here are some ideas on how you can remain healthy while being at work:

Look at your chair - Can your chair support your back for long hours? Being at the office means that sitting for long hours can sometimes be unavoidable. Therefore, assess whether you have the best chair for posture or if asking for a new ergonomic one would be more beneficial. If you decide on getting a new chair, it would pay to look into chairs for posture support and choose one good office chair for your back.

Lifestyle change - Okay don’t worry, this doesn’t mean total lifestyle change. Instead, try tweaking your diet into something healthier by adding more greens and fruits. It’s also fine even if you’re not one who’s super into sports. You can try Pilates, Yoga or even simple running instead and do it at least once or twice a week.

Get up and walk - this is perhaps one of the most basic and no-brainer suggestion ever when it comes to fighting back pain. But really, one of the best way to fight back pain and the effects of sitting for long hours is to simply stand up and take a walk. Don’t let an hour pass without standing up and taking a few minutes to walk.

Yes, your relationship with your office chair can be toxic but it doesn’t mean you have no choice but to go with it. Unlike personal relationships, you don’t need to walk away from it completely (because that’s impossible especially if your work involves sitting in front of a computer). You simply need to know how to fight its bad effects and instead try to reverse them.