Think you’re good to go after pounding out an hour or so on the elliptical or treadmill? Not so much if you’re spending the rest of the day on your butt. Or so suggests the conclusion of a recently published paper on exercise and sedentary behavior:
One hour of daily physical exercise cannot compensate the negative effects of inactivity on insulin level and plasma lipids if the rest of the day is spent sitting. Reducing inactivity by increasing the time spent walking/standing is more effective than one hour of physical exercise, when energy expenditure is kept constant.
This study seems to echo the findings of one from earlier in 2012. The good news from the earlier study is that you may not need to completely overhaul your life to avoid the downside of a desk job:
[By] breaking up long periods of sitting still, you can partly counteract the negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle.
We were meant to move!
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health, & food policy. And cats! 
Beth, liked your QOTD. I have always found this to be true. From the time I was a 20ish year old and barely able to keep up with the 80 year olds in the hiking club, I was a believer.
I do things now like routing my printer to further away, walking at lunch, walking in the evening, hiking and photography- all for movement over a day’s time. I know that a desk job needed something so I did not undo the good things of weight loss/maintenance and my mostly Paleo diet.
Thanks for the links. I spend almost 0 time down. Walking = no injuries, as long as I don’t trip and fall. I find this much better than the chronic cardio on an eliptical or treadmill at the gym. Which NEVER worked for me (because of the cardio and my diet at the time).
Karen P