This Is How Many Calories You Burn Standing

There is currently a debate about what is better for your health: sitting on an office chair or standing during the entire day. While there isn’t a unique answer to this question since it is still up for debate, many advocates of standing tend to refer that you can burn a lot more calories when you stand than when you sit. But is this true?

So, how many calories do you burn standing?

According to a study published in 2018 in the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology, standing has been one of the major evolvements in what concerns to the health of most people around the world.

The reality is that we keep hearing that standing is better than sitting the entire day at work. While there are many different reasons supporting this argument, one of the most well known is the fact that there is a huge difference in calories burned.

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You may have already heard many people claiming that standing burns twice as many calories as sitting. But is this really true? How many calories do you burn standing?

The reality is that this is something that isn’t possible to quantify in a single study. The truth is that there are many different factors that influence caloric burn. However, this is exactly where the study we mentioned above comes into place. After all, this recently published study is a meta-analysis of several studies. So, you can now know how many calories do you burn standing.

This analysis took a look at 658 studies and narrowed them down to just 46. The main question to them all was the same one that we are trying to answer here: how many calories do you burn standing.

The main goal of this analysis was to discover the difference in energy expenditure on average between sitting and standing, and taking into consideration other important factors such as the gender, age, overall fitness, weight, among others.

According to the results, the average difference in calories that were burned between sitting and standing was 0.15 kcal/minute. In addition, the study also concluded that the average difference was lower on women.

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By looking at these results, you can immediately see that you won’t be burning calories twice standing rather than sitting. However, we can definitely say that you will burn more when you are standing than when you are sitting. Here’s an example that was withdrawn from the study:

“By substituting sitting with standing for six hours/day, a 65 kg person (143 pounds) will expend an additional 54 kcal/day. Assuming no increase in energy intake, this difference in energy expenditure would be translated into the energy content of about 2.5 kg (5.5 pounds) of body fat mass in one year.”

The truth is that the answer to how many calories do you burn standing depends on too many factors. While this study found this evidence looking at 46 different studies, the truth is that you need to take into account other factors such as your age, weight, gender, among others. While you will tend to burn more calories standing rather than sitting, you won’t lose weight just by standing. In case this is your goal, you need to change your lifestyle as well.