Ask HN: If sitting is a lethal activity, what are some practical alternatives?

[wchest]

I have read a number of stories in the past few months like the recent article in the NYT magazine ("Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?" link below) which nearly all come to the same conclusion: sitting is bad for your health and we should all be more active throughout the day (exercising a few times a week doesn't help).

Does anyone have any innovative, and preferably inexpensive, ways to achieve this? Solutions like a treadmill desk seem a bit overkill, expensive, and I would imagine might make it hard to concentrate.

link to NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage

[apas]

Ha, what a timing.

Couple days before, I saw MTV's Facebook Diary. In it, there was Pedram, a Facebook engineer who uses a standing desk. At first I thought "he must be crazy" etc. Just yesterday though, I got the "trend" and converted my computer workspace from a "normal desk" to a standing desk.

Other cool people who use a standing desk (and swear by its name): Gina Trapani, Marco Arment—even form US gov member Rumsfeld.

See more info re: standing desks here http://apas.gr/desk/

[riskish]

I've worked at a few companies and seen many people use standing desks as an alternative. I prefer sitting when working, but I take breaks after a set amount of time (i.e this part is going to take an hour, so I'll break in an hour).

Outside of that I try to take have separate time for real exercise. I don't like to mix the two up (treadmill desk).

[latch]

standing desks: http://www.google.com/search?q=Standing+desks