Total Athletic Therapy: Sitting vs. Standing Calorie Burning Calculator

By: Joel Luedke

We've done a couple posts on the downfalls of sitting and how bad it can be on your hips and back and overall just your general health. We still firmly believe that this is a substantial problem and that we need to get people up and standing more throughout the day for the promotion of optimal mobility and living pain free. However there appears to be yet another benefit of standing that is gaining some recent popularity and that is WEIGHT LOSS.

When you think about it, it makes sense that you burn more calories when you stand compared to sitting but the amount that it adds up to over the course of a year is astounding...It's downright unbelievable!

The website Just Stand has developed a calculator that determines just how many additional calories you burn by standing at work. It asks you to enter your weight, how many hours you sit at work during a typical day and how many days you think you'll be sitting throughout a year. Curious, I decided to see what the change might be over the course of a year based on my own information. Based on a 5 day work week, working 48 out of the 52 weeks of the year and 8 hours a day, with a weight of 240 pounds I would burn approximately 354,816 calories just sitting. That's quite a bit of calories just for sitting around all day but minuscule when compared to standing under the same settings which comes out to 460,800 calories.

That's a difference of 105, 984 additional calories over the course of the year. That's one heck of a difference and when you then break it down into more relatable terms it really hits you.

A difference of 105,984 calories or an additional 106,000 calories expended (calorie deficit) is roughly what it would take to lose about 30 pounds of body fat (3,500 calories per pound of fat). Just think about that for a second. You can lose 30 pounds of fat just by switching to a standing desk regardless of whether or not you change your fitness or dietary habits!

An average 210 lb runner will burn roughly 3,600 calories running a marathon so to expend an equal amount of calories (106,000) you would expend from standing you would have to run 29 marathons and a 10k to burn that same amount throughout the course of a year.

There are plenty of options to look at for transitioning into a standing desk. These range from building custom stands for your own desk, adding a box to your desk to raise it, to buying an adjustable one for $150-$400. It's worth the investment for both your hips and metabolism.