essay sedentary lifestyle

Task 2 Essay: Sedentary Lifestyles

Task 2 Question: Despite a large number of gyms, a sedentary lifestyle is gaining popularity in the contemporary world. What problems are associated with this? What solutions can you suggest?

Band 8+ Sample Answer:

(Intro) It is true that although a growing number of fitness centres have opened, people’s inactivity has become a pressing issue in modern society. This lifestyle can have detrimental impacts on physical and mental health, but measures can be taken in schools and offices to address future problems.

(Body 1) One dangerous example of sedentary behaviour is excessive sitting. The most crucial issue is that people who spend most of their time sitting are more vulnerable to chronic illnesses., This is due to their blood pressure increasing, failing to filter and discharge fats, sugar or noxious substances, which can heighten the risks of diseases such as obesity and diabetes. In addition, prolonged periods of inactivity can also lead to poorer mental health. Studies have suggested that these individuals can suffer from elevated levels of stress, anxiety or depression. According to recent research, the likelihood of depression among office workers who sit for hours is 20% higher than labourers.

(Body 2) However, I believe that awareness raising and workplace opportunities can discourage a sedentary lifestyle. Firstly, the government can run campaigns to raise students’ awareness of the harmful effects of inactivity. These workshops should be carried out in schools and universities by being incorporated into health sessions in the curriculum. Secondly, businesses should encourage their employees to exercise regularly by incentivising them. For example, Honda Vietnam organises a daily Physical Education session in the morning, and the most physically active employee of the month will receive a monetary award. This is the perfect exemplification of helping people maintain a healthy lifestyle at the workplace.

(Conclusion) In conclusion, while not staying active can exert serious effects on people’s mentality and physicality these can be combated with youth education and company-led activities. This is a joint effort by both the government and businesses which can hopefully address this problem and avert a future public health crisis. (307 words).

Words: Student essay, corrected & upgraded by Nick Kemp, former IELTS examiner.

Image: Shushipu / Pixabay.

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How to Fix a Sedentary Lifestyle

• Sedentary Lifestyle Definition

How Harmful Is It?

Modern advances make our lives easier, but they've led many of us to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle. Moving less and sitting more is linked to several health conditions and is believed to be a significant cause of the obesity epidemic.

Sitting for longer than four hours per day significantly increases your risk for cardiovascular disease (perhaps even more than smoking), diabetes , and several other obesity-related conditions.

Mayur Kakade / Getty Images

Fixing a sedentary lifestyle takes some conscious effort at first, but the value of being more physically active is worth it for its myriad benefits.

Whether you're stuck at a desk all day or just struggling to get motivated and exercise, here are ideas to help you get moving.

What Counts as a Sedentary Lifestyle?

While there is no strict definition of what constitutes a sedentary lifestyle, researchers have a few different metrics to measure what a sedentary lifestyle is. One measure is the time an individual spends seated or reclining during waking hours. Spending four to six waking hours sitting or lying down is considered sedentary.

It would seem reasonable to assume that those meeting the requirements for physical activity would not be considered sedentary. However, research suggests that even those who do the amount of physical activity recommended by the World Health Organization (at least 150 minutes of moderate activity during the week or 75 minutes of intense activity per week) can still be considered sedentary if they spend four to six hours sitting or reclining per day.

In the short term, being inactive can increase depression or anxiety. It can also affect the way the body processes fats and sugars in the diet and lead to some weight gain if you aren't burning enough calories.

Over the long term, sedentary lifestyles increase the risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer. In addition to increasing the chances of dying of these causes, it also decreases the quality of life through increased knee pain, higher rates of depression, and decreased cognitive function.

Fixing a Sedentary Lifestyle

If you suspect you are living a sedentary lifestyle, the good news is there are myriad ways to add activity into your day and reverse your sedentary tendencies. Here are some suggestions.

Plenty of research has borne out the health benefits of a daily 30-minute walk.

Walking has a positive impact on mental health, a reduction in the incidence of cardiovascular disease and stroke, and a positive impact on blood pressure.

It's easy to start walking more, even at the office. Suggest walking meetings instead of sitting around a conference table. You can also try adding activities before or after work, such as walking your dog for longer stretches.

Look for other opportunities to take a walk. For example, if you live nearby, walk your kids to or from school, or at least as far as the bus stop. You can also walk after dinner and make it a family event.

Even if your family's schedule doesn't permit sharing dinner together, try taking a stroll through the neighborhood when everyone gets home. Not only will you all get moving, but you'll get to spend quality time together.

Take the Stairs

A study published in 2017 found stair climbing, considered a vigorous-intensity physical activity, burns more calories per minute than jogging.

Taking the stairs whenever possible can help you maintain a healthy weight as well as build and maintain strong bones, joints , and muscles.

Walk the Parking Lot

As long as you can do so safely, parking your car at the far end of the parking lot or down the street from your destination is an easy way to add extra steps to your day.

In the same vein as taking the stairs instead of the elevator if you're able, if you have the time and can walk a little farther, you'll get the benefits of additional activity.

Plus, walking across the parking lot or around the block from your office also gives you a moment outside to soak up the sun or enjoy the change of seasons, which can also be great for your mental health.

Ditch Your Car

The way we travel in the modern age is associated with rates of overweight and obesity. Compared to more passive ways of getting around, the active modes, such as walking or cycling, have many health benefits and greater potential to prevent obesity .

Compared to driving your own car to work, even public transit appears associated with a healthier weight and body composition. Standing on a subway platform or walking to a bus stop requires more steps than just going from your front door to your garage, in addition to more time standing and balancing.

Stand Up at Work

If your job requires you to sit for long periods, make it a point to stand up at least every 20 minutes. You may need to set a reminder using your calendar or phone, especially if you're used to getting involved with a project and losing track of time.

If you're worried about interrupting your workflow, you don't necessarily have to stop your task to take a quick standing or stretching break. You can easily take calls or review files standing up.

Try taking brief breaks away from your desk to get some water or confer with a colleague at their desk rather than sending an email.

Change Your Workstation

You might also consider getting a standing desk, a treadmill desk, or a fitness ball seat (which promotes "active sitting," where you engage your core).

If you have a workstation that can be adjusted to various heights, you can do some of your daily computer work standing up.

Standing workstations may even improve your posture, reduce back pain , and when arranged properly, can be a better ergonomic fit. Some companies employ workspace-ergonomics specialists who can evaluate your workstation and help you get set up.

Do Your Chores

Instead of moving from table to couch, clean your kitchen after dinner. Tasks like doing the dishes and wiping down countertops count as standing activities in your day.

Other chores like taking out the garbage, sweeping the floors, and vacuuming are even more physically active.

A bonus is that you'll get housework done during the week, which frees up your days off for more fun activities.

Be Active After Dinner

Planning activity after dinner not only boosts your fitness, it helps keep your blood sugar levels in the optimal range and reduces your risk of developing insulin resistance .

Even if you're eating out and won't have to do the cleaning up, you don't have to miss out on a chance to get moving. Suggest continuing the mealtime conversation with dinner companions by taking a short walk.

Use Commercial Breaks

Watching your favorite television show or having a movie night at home with your family doesn't have to be a prolonged sedentary activity.

You can use commercial breaks as a chance to move around. Need to refill the popcorn bowl? Pause the movie and give everyone a chance to stretch while you replenish snacks.

You can even make a game of it. See who can do the most pushups or situps during a commercial break. Or, if you still have chores to take care of, multitask. Folding laundry is one physical activity you can easily do while watching a movie.

Intentionally breaking up any screen time, whether television, computer, tablet, or phone, will help reduce the time you spend sedentary each day.

Develop a Fitness Routine

If the thought of going for a run intimidates you, you don’t have to run a marathon to enjoy the benefits of fitness.

There are many options for exercise . Experiment and find which you prefer. You might like running outdoors on trails or through your neighborhood best. Maybe the cardio machines at a gym or community center are a better fit. Swimming, high-intensity interval training, and cycling are all excellent options to break free of a sedentary lifestyle.

Exercising can also be a social event if you want it to be. If you don't prefer to exercise solo, you can join a fitness group.

Plant a Garden

Any gardener will tell you how much physical effort is involved in every gardening activity. Gardening is mentally and spiritually stimulating, but many people find it an enjoyable way to stay active.

The American Heart Association considers general gardening to be in the category of moderate-intensity physical activity.

You can get started with a garden in your own backyard if you have space, but if not, there are other ways to get your hands dirty.

If you don't have a yard of your own, volunteer to help out at a local community garden. Many cities, school districts, and nature centers rely on green-thumbed volunteers for planting and maintenance.

Try a Fitness Tracker

A pedometer is a great way to track your steps, which can help you gauge your activity throughout the day.

Knowing your activity can alert you to patterns or habits that lean toward an overly sedentary lifestyle. You can take action to combat the effects of sitting too much by finding opportunities to move more.

Sophisticated fitness trackers do more than tell you how many steps you're taking—you can use them to track calories in and calories out, your day-to-day activity level, and set goals. Some even track your heart rate and sleep.

Many smartphone apps provide similar functions even if a wearable fitness tracker isn't your preference or within your budget. Many options are free and may track your activity passively, so you won't have to remember to log your activity.

It is well-documented that a sedentary lifestyle leads to poor health outcomes. The great news is that even small changes to the amount of activity a person gets can lead to more significant changes in overall health. Simply walking more, parking farther away, or doing household chores positively impacts health. Adding a fitness routine to your lifestyle, whether cardio, swimming, or resistance training, can lead to significant health improvements.

Park JH, Moon JH, Kim HJ, Kong MH, Oh YH. Sedentary lifestyle: overview of updated evidence of potential health risks . Korean J Fam Med . 2020;41(6):365-373. doi:10.4082/kjfm.20.0165

Magnon V, Dutheil F, Auxiette C. Sedentariness: a need for a definition . Front Public Health . 2018;6:372. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2018.00372

MedlinePlus. Health risks of an inactive lifestyle .

An N, Chuo J. Walking and activeness: the first step toward the prevention of strokes and mental illness . Comput Intell Neurosci. 2022;2022:3440437. doi:10.1155/2022/3440437

Allison MK, Baglole JH, Martin BJ, Macinnis MJ, Gurd BJ, Gibala MJ. Brief Intense Stair Climbing Improves Cardiorespiratory Fitness . Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2017;49(2):298-307. doi:10.1249/MSS.0000000000001188

Parise I, Abbott P, Trankle S. Drivers to obesity—a study of the association between time spent commuting daily and obesity in the Nepean blue mountains area . Int J Environ Res Public Health . 2021;19(1):410. doi:10.3390/ijerph19010410

By Yasmine S. Ali, MD, MSCI Yasmine Ali, MD, is board-certified in cardiology. She is an assistant clinical professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and an award-winning physician writer.

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Health Risks of an Inactive Lifestyle

What is an inactive lifestyle.

Being a couch potato. Not exercising. A sedentary or inactive lifestyle. You have probably heard of all of these phrases, and they mean the same thing: a lifestyle with a lot of sitting and lying down, with very little to no exercise.

In the United States and around the world, people are spending more and more time doing sedentary activities. During our leisure time, we are often sitting: while using a computer or other device, watching TV, or playing video games. Many of our jobs have become more sedentary, with long days sitting at a desk. And the way most of us get around involves sitting - in cars, on buses, and on trains.

How does an inactive lifestyle affect your body?

When you have an inactive lifestyle,:

• You burn fewer calories. This makes you more likely to gain weight.
• You may lose muscle strength and endurance, because you are not using your muscles as much
• Your bones may get weaker and lose some mineral content
• Your metabolism may be affected, and your body may have more trouble breaking down fats and sugars
• Your immune system may not work as well
• You may have poorer blood circulation
• Your body may have more inflammation
• You may develop a hormonal imbalance

What are the health risks of an inactive lifestyle?

Having an inactive lifestyle can be one of the causes of many chronic diseases. By not getting regular exercise, you raise your risk of:

• Heart diseases , including coronary artery disease and heart attack
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Metabolic syndrome
• Type 2 diabetes
• Certain cancers, including colon , breast , and uterine cancers
• Osteoporosis and falls
• Increased feelings of depression and anxiety

Having a sedentary lifestyle can also raise your risk of premature death. And the more sedentary you are, the higher your health risks are.

How can I get started with exercise?

If you have been inactive, you may need to start slowly. You can keep adding more exercise gradually. The more you can do, the better. But try not to feel overwhelmed, and do what you can. Getting some exercise is always better than getting none. Eventually, your goal can be to get the recommended amount of exercise for your age and health.

There are many different ways to get exercise; it is important to find the types that are best for you . You can also try to add activity to your life in smaller ways, such as at home and at work.

How can I be more active around the house?

There are some ways you can be active around your house:

• Housework, gardening, and yard work are all physical work. To increase the intensity, you could try doing them at a more vigorous pace.
• Keep moving while you watch TV. Lift hand weights, do some gentle yoga stretches, or pedal an exercise bike. Instead of using the TV remote, get up and change the channels yourself.
• Work out at home with a workout video (on your TV or on the internet)
• Go for a walk in your neighborhood. It can be more fun if you walk your dog, walk your kids to school, or walk with a friend.
• Stand up when talking on the phone
• Get some exercise equipment for your home. Treadmills and elliptical trainers are great, but not everyone has the money or space for one. Less expensive equipment such as yoga balls, exercise mats, stretch bands, and hand weights can help you get a workout at home too.

How can I be more active at work?

Most of us sit when we are working, often in front of a computer. In fact, less than 20% of Americans have physically active jobs. It can be challenging to fit physical activity into your busy workday, but here are some tips to help you get moving:

• Get up from your chair and move around at least once an hour
• Stand when you are talking on the phone
• Find out whether your company can get you a stand-up or treadmill desk
• Take the stairs instead of the elevator
• Use your break or part of your lunch hour to walk around the building
• Stand up and walk to a colleague's office instead of sending an email
• Have "walking" or standing meetings with co-workers instead of sitting in a conference room

• Get Real about Getting Active (American Heart Association)
• Overcoming Barriers to Physical Activity (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Also in Spanish
• Screen time and children (Medical Encyclopedia) Also in Spanish
• Standing or Walking Versus Sitting on the Job in 2016 (Department of Labor)
• What Are the Risks of Sitting Too Much? (Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research) Also in Spanish

Clinical Trials

Journal articles references and abstracts from medline/pubmed (national library of medicine).

• Article: Secular trends in the prevalence of meeting 24-hour movement guidelines among...
• Article: Measurement of Sedentary Behavior-The Outcomes of the Angle for Posture Estimation...
• Article: The sedentary behavior reduction in pregnancy intervention (SPRING) pilot and feasibility...
• Health Risks of an Inactive Lifestyle -- see more articles

The information on this site should not be used as a substitute for professional medical care or advice. Contact a health care provider if you have questions about your health.

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Sedentary Lifestyle - band 7

In spite of the increasing numbers of gyms and physical fitness centres, many people are involved in a way of living that is sedentary in the modern world these days. In this essay, I am going to elaborate on the problems related to this lifestyle and give solutions.

Firstly, a significant problem associated with leading an inactive lifestyle is the risk it poses to health.it can result into obesity which is a major disadvantage. Such people tend to deposit excessive fat in the body and thus causing problems. For example, cancers that can be breast and other types of malignant tumours. In addition, they are prone to diabetes. Furthermore, it can cause depression because of isolation and poor social interaction combined with low mood, decreased muscle strength, back related problems involving back pain and osteoarthritis due to lack of exercise (bones tend to get weaker).

To solve this problem, government can embark on campaigns to increase the awareness and promote the benefits of an active lifestyle. If more people are educated, this will in turn encourage them to take the extra steps needed to improve their lifestyle. Moreover, affordable gym membership would go a long way in attracting people to engage in physical fitness activities, thus improving their health. Provision of gym in work places to encourage employees to keep fit. For instance, people have to stay working for 8 to 12 hours on the computer in the workplace can have breaks at work (to participate in fitness activities) to reduce the sedentary hours spent in front of the screen.

In conclusion, due to advancement in technology in the modern days in which we live, there is an growing increase in the number of people living a sedentary lifestyle and this has been found to be associated with health problems which can be avoided by encouraging people to do physical fitness activities through provision of affordable gym membership and health awareness campaign.

Task Achievement

You answer the question very well developing some of your ideas and providing supporting examples. You present some solutions and express your own view effectively. (8)

Coherence & Cohesion

Paragraphing is appropriate and there is overall progression to the response. Although linkers are used appropriately, you could do more to use inter-sentence linkers to create more complex sentences, as well as across sentence-linkers, eg while, although, whereas (7.5)

Lexical Resource

You have used a good range of vocabulary for the topic, which is used appropriately and accurately. (8)

Grammatical Range & Accuracy

You include a wide range of grammar structures and these are used accurately, but try to avoid lots of short simple sentences and incorporate them into the argument via more complex structures. (7)

Overall Comment - how to improve

The response fulfils the requirements of the task. You express your view effectively using a range of appropriate lexis and language structures with a high degree of accuracy. Aim for greater cohesion and nicer flow to the essay by avoiding very short sentences.

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Too Much Sitting: The Population-Health Science of Sedentary Behavior

Neville owen.

1 Cancer Prevention Research Centre, School of Population Health, The University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia

Geneviève N Healy

2 Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, Victoria, Australia

Charles E. Matthews

3 Nutritional Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, MD

David W. Dunstan

Even when adults meet physical activity guidelines, sitting for prolonged periods can compromise metabolic health. TV time and objective-measurement studies show deleterious associations, and breaking up sedentary time is beneficial. Sitting time, TV time, and time sitting in automobiles increase premature mortality risk. Further evidence from prospective studies, intervention trials, and population-based behavioral studies is required.

INTRODUCTION

The physical, economic and social environments in which modern humans sit or move within the contexts of their daily lives have been changing rapidly, and particularly so since the middle of the last century. These changes — in transportation, communications, workplace and domestic-entertainment technologies — have been associated with significantly-reduced demands for physical activity. However, these reductions in the environmental demands for being physically active are associated with another class of health-related behaviors.

Sedentary behaviors (typically in the contexts of TV viewing, computer and game-console use, workplace sitting, and time spent in automobiles) have emerged as a new focus for research on physical activity and health ( 18 , 27 , 31 - 33 ). Put simply, the perspective that we propose is that too much sitting is distinct from too little exercise . Research findings on sedentary behavior and health have proliferated in the 10 years following publication of our first Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews paper on this topic ( 32 ). As we will demonstrate, initial findings on the metabolic correlates of prolonged TV viewing time (TV time) have since been confirmed by recent objective-measurement studies, which also show that breaking up sedentary time can be beneficial. Furthermore, we describe recent studies from Canada, Australia, and the United States, which show prospective relationships of sedentary behaviors with premature mortality. Importantly, adults can meet public-health guidelines on physical activity, but if they sit for prolonged periods of time, their metabolic health is compromised. This is a new and challenging area for exercise science, behavioral science, and population-health research. However, many scientific questions remain to be answered before it can be concluded with a high degree of certainty that these adverse health consequences are uniquely due to too much sitting , or if what has been observed so far can be accounted for by too little light, moderate, and/or vigorous activity.

The updated recommendation for adults on Physical Activity and Public Health from the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association (ACSM/AHA) “clearly states that the recommended amount of aerobic activity (whether of moderate- or vigorous-intensity) is in addition to routine activities of daily living which are of light intensity, such as self care, casual walking or grocery shopping, or less than 10 min of duration such as walking to the parking lot or taking out the trash” (( 20 ) p. 1426). Logically, doing such daily activities differently could involve reductions in sitting time, but sitting per se is not addressed specifically in the recommendations. In this context, the key question to be asked about the strength of the evidence on sedentary behavior and health that we present in this paper is: Would one expect to see a statement on reducing sitting time included in future physical activity recommendations?

Sedentary Behavior

Sedentary behaviors (from the Latin sedere , “to sit”) include sitting during commuting, in the workplace and the domestic environment, and during leisure time. Sedentary behaviors such TV viewing, computer use, or sitting in an automobile typically are in the energy-expenditure range of 1.0 to 1.5 METs (multiples of the basal metabolic rate)( 1 ). Thus, sedentary behaviors are those that involve sitting and low levels of energy expenditure. In contrast, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity such as bicycling, swimming, walking, or running may be done in a variety of body positions, but require an energy expenditure of 3 to 8 METs ( 1 ). In this perspective, light intensity activity behaviors are those done while standing, but that requires expenditure of no more than 2.9 METS.

Addressing research on the health consequences of sedentary behavior requires some initial clarification of terminology. We refer to sedentary behaviors (different activities, for different purposes in different contexts; see above). We refer also to sitting time , a generic descriptor covering what these sedentary behaviors primarily involve. As we demonstrate below, adults spend the majority of their waking hours either sitting , or in light intensity activity (predominantly standing with some gentle ambulation).

Time in sedentary behaviors is significant, if only because it displaces time spent in higher intensity physical activity — contributing to a reduction in overall physical activity energy expenditure. For example, displacement of two hours per day of light intensity activity (2.5 METS) by sedentary behaviors (1.5 METS) would be predicted to reduce physical activity energy expenditure by about two MET-hrs/d, or approximately the level of expenditure associated with walking for 30 min per day (0.5 hrs * 3.5 METs = 1.75 MET-hrs).

Research on physical activity and health has concentrated largely on quantifying the amount of time spent in activities involving levels of energy expenditure of 3 METs or more, characterizing those with no participation at this level as “sedentary” ( 33 ). However, this definition neglects the substantial contribution that light intensity (1.9 to 2.9 METs) activities make to overall daily energy expenditure ( 8 ), and also the potential health benefits of participating in these light-intensity activities, rather than sitting. Furthermore, although individuals can be both sedentary and physically inactive, there is also the potential for high sedentary time and being physically active to co-exist (the Active Couch Potato phenomenon, which we explain below). An example would be an office worker who jogs or bikes to and from work, but who then sits all day at a desk and spends several hours watching TV in the evening.

Common behaviors in which humans now spend so much time — TV viewing, computer use and electronic games, sitting in automobiles — involve prolonged periods of these low levels of metabolic energy expenditure. It is our contention that sedentary behavior is not simply the absence of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, but rather is a unique set of behaviors, with unique environmental determinants and a range of potentially-unique health consequences ( 43 ). Our population-health research perspective is on the distinct role of sedentary behavior, as it may influence obesity and other metabolic precursors of major chronic diseases (type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and breast and colon cancer).

Sedentary Behavior and Health: A Unique Underlying Biology?

Physiologically, distinct effects are observed between prolonged sedentary time and too little physical activity ( 17 ). There are broad consistencies between the patterns of findings from epidemiologic studies on the cardio-metabolic correlates of prolonged sitting that we will describe, and recent evidence on biological mechanisms — “inactivity physiology” — identified in animal models. It seems likely that there is a unique physiology of sedentary time, within which biological processes that are distinct from traditionally-understood exercise physiology are operating. The groundbreaking work of Hamilton and colleagues ( 3 , 16 ) provides a compelling body of evidence that the chronic, unbroken periods of muscular unloading associated with prolonged sedentary time may have deleterious biological consequences. Physiologically, it has been suggested that the loss of local contractile stimulation induced through sitting leads to both the suppression of skeletal muscle lipoprotein lipase (LPL) activity (which is necessary for triglyceride uptake and HDL-cholesterol production) and reduced glucose uptake ( 3 , 16 ). A detailed account of findings and implications from Hamilton’s studies has been provided in recent reviews ( 17 , 18 ).

Hamilton’s findings suggest that standing, which involves isometric contraction of the anti-gravity (postural) muscles and only low levels of energy expenditure, elicits EMG and skeletal muscle LPL changes. However, in the past, this form of standing would be construed as a “sedentary behaviour” because of the limited amount of bodily movement and energy expenditure entailed. This highlights the need for an evolution of the definitions used for sedentary behavior research. Within this perspective, standing would not be a sedentary activity and our approach (subject to revision as further findings accumulate) is to equate “sedentary” with ”sitting.”

THE METABOLIC HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF TOO MUCH SITTING

Tv viewing time: the ausdiab studies.

AusDiab (the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle study) conducted initially in 1999/2000, of a common leisure-time sedentary behavior — TV viewing time — with biomarkers of cardio-metabolic risk. AusDiab recruited a large, population-based sample of some 11,000 adults from all Australian states and the Northern Territory. Some of our first AusDiab findings were that among adults without known diabetes, self-reported TV viewing time was positively associated with undiagnosed abnormal glucose metabolism ( 12 ) and the metabolic syndrome ( 11 ). The strongest relationships were observed in the highest TV time category (four hours or more per day). When TV time was considered as a continuous measure ( 10 ), a detrimental, dose-response association was observed in women between TV viewing time and 2-h plasma glucose and fasting insulin. Importantly, all of these associations persisted after adjustment for sustained moderate-to-vigorous intensity leisure time physical activity and waist circumference. Some of these cross sectional relationships have been replicated recently in prospective analyses: increases in TV viewing over five-years predicted significant adverse changes in waist circumference for men and women and in diastolic blood pressure and a clustered cardio-metabolic risk score for women. These associations were independent of baseline television viewing time, baseline physical activity and physical activity change, and other potential confounders ( 48 ).

Being Sedentary and Meeting Physical Activity Guidelines: The Active Couch Potato

We further examined relationships of TV time with continuous metabolic risk in men and women who reported at least 150 min a week of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity — the generally-accepted public health guidelines for health-enhancing physical activity ( 20 ). Among these healthy, physically-active adults, significant detrimental dose-response associations of TV time were observed with waist circumference, systolic blood pressure, and 2-h plasma glucose in both men and women, as well as fasting plasma glucose, triglycerides, and HDL-cholesterol in women only ( 23 ). This observation — the Active Couch Potato phenomenon — is important. The particular metabolic consequences of time spent watching TV are adverse, even among those considered to be sufficiently physically active to reduce their chronic disease risk. This finding reinforces the potential importance of the deleterious health consequences of prolonged sitting time, which may be independent of the protective effect of regular moderate-intensity physical activity.

TV Viewing Time: Associations with Biomarkers for Men and for Women

One of the striking findings in the AusDiab TV-time studies was that the associations with cardio-metabolic biomarkers were stronger for women than for men ( 10 - 12 , 23 ). We subsequently examined the associations of both TV time and self-reported overall sitting time with these biomarkers in the 2004/2005 AusDiab sample ( 42 ). The TV time relationships for women were replicated, but for self-reported overall sitting time (which is inclusive of the TV time component), the associations were similar for men and women. So, the question remains as to whether there is a particular relationship of TV time with metabolic health for women. There are some testable hypotheses that can be put forward in this context: Are there dietary or TV time-related snacking differences between men and women? Are women (who have a lower average skeletal muscle mass and a higher average fat mass than men) metabolically more susceptible to the adverse influences of prolonged sitting, following the typically-large evening meal?

Although some of our most striking initial findings on the adverse health consequences of sedentary behavior have been for TV time, there should be caution in treating this common leisure-time sedentary behavior as a marker for overall sedentary time. We have modest evidence ( 39 ) that for women, TV time is positively correlated with other leisure time sedentary behaviors and with being less likely to meet physical activity and health guidelines. However, these findings need to be replicated in other populations and with other measures. Furthermore, TV viewing is associated with other health-related behaviors ( 51 ) and those in the highest TV time categories are more likely to eat in front of the TV set ( 26 ). It is thus plausible that TV time will influence energy balance in two main ways. Most people sit to watch TV and it has a lower energy cost than the alternative activities that it replaces. Also, high levels of TV time are likely to increase energy intake because of prompts from frequent commercials about food and beverages, and unlike for many other activities, the hands are free to eat during TV time ( 51 ). It is thus a reasonable hypothesis that this latter factor may partially explain why higher levels of TV time are associated with higher waist circumferences and with adverse blood-glucose and lipid profiles.

We must emphasize that TV time is one of a number of sedentary behaviors that characterise how adults go about their daily lives, and there is potential measurement error associated with using the self-report measures that are common to most TV-time studies. However, based on our recent systematic review ( 6 ), we have some confidence that the TV-time measures that we have used are reasonably reliable and valid.

OBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF SEDENTARY TIME: NEW FINDINGS

Advances in the objective measurement of sedentary behavior.

These Australian studies summarised above have all relied on self-reported TV time or overall sitting time. However, advances in measurement technology now provide significantly-enhanced scientific traction, which is helping to deal with the methodological limitation of measurement error related to the use of self-report items. Prior to summarising findings from our objective-measurement studies with AusDiab study participants, it is helpful to consider the new perspectives that emerge when accelerometer data on sedentary time and physical activity are examined. Accelerometers (as distinct from pedometers which count and display number of steps taken) are small electronic devices worn on the hip, which provide an objective record of the volume, intensity, and frequency of activity between and within days, which may be downloaded to computer databases and used to derive scientifically-meaningful activity variables. Accelerometers have been employed as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), gathering data from large population-based samples of adult residents of the United States. Findings reported to date suggest that, compared to what has been assumed to be the case from self-report surveys, levels of participation in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity are extremely low ( 44 ), and that some 60% or more of these adults’ waking hours are spent sedentary ( 29 ).

Sedentary Behavior during Adults’ Waking Hours

To illustrate the overall patterns of activity in adults’ daily lives, Figure 1 shows a cluster heat map ( 49 ). This is a graphical representation from Genevieve Healy, showing accelerometer data for one individual over one week, in the manner originally presented by Jane Kent-Braun’s group ( 15 ). The values taken by the accelerometer counts within each minute are represented as colors in the two-dimensional map. The dark blue shading shows accelerometer counts that are below the currently used but still debated cut-off of 100 counts per minute for sedentary time, and which are taken to be indicative predominantly of sitting (a caveat, however, is that some of the minutes shown sedentary will include standing quite still). The pale-blue through to yellow colorings indicate light-intensity through to moderate-intensity physical activities. The yellow through to red indicate moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. From an energy-expenditure perspective, the dark blue translates to very low levels of energy expenditure, with the red reflecting high energy expenditure levels. What is striking in Figure 1 is the extent to which this person spends his or her time either in light-intensity activities (pale blue through to white) and being sedentary (dark blue). While we would not contend that this is a totally precise and unambiguous representation of sitting time, light intensity, and moderate-vigorous activity, it nevertheless is an informative perspective.

Being physically active, but also highly sedentary: one week of accelerometer-count data showing, on average, 31 mins/day moderate-to-vigorous activity time (> 1951 counts/min) and 71% of waking hours sedentary (< 100 counts/min).

Figure 1 illustrates one of our key messages about the role of sedentary time in the physical activity and health equation: it is possible to achieve a level of activity consistent with the public-health guidelines for health-related physical activity (30 min of moderate intensity physical activity on most days of the week) but to spend the vast majority of waking hours involved in sedentary behaviors. In this case, we see that the accumulated moderate-to-vigorous physical activity time is 31 min; however, this person spends 71% of their waking hours in sedentary time. Thus, it is possible for individuals to be physically active, yet highly sedentary — the Active Couch Potato phenomenon identified in the AusDiab TV-time studies ( 24 ).

The main scientific caveat for this perspective is that these data show “activity,” which we infer is reflective of “behavior.” However, there are scientific devils in the detail of these objective-movement data: debate remains about what are the most appropriate activity-count cut points to identify sedentary and light intensity time; also, different cut points may be appropriate for adults of different ages, race/ethnicity, and adiposity status.

Objectively-Assessed Sedentary Time: Key Studies

As well as demonstrating remarkably-low levels of physical activity and high levels of sedentary time within contemporary human environments ( 29 , 44 ), objective measures have also demonstrated the adverse impact of prolonged sedentary time on cardio-metabolic biomarkers of risk. At least three studies in Europe and Australia have examined the associations of objectively-measured sedentary time with continuous cardio-metabolic biomarkers: the ProActive trial conducted in the United Kingdom (UK), the European RISC study, and the AusDiab study ( 2 , 13 , 14 , 23 , 25 ). For those in the UK ProActive trial (258 participants aged 30-50 yr with a family history of type 2 diabetes), sedentary time was detrimentally associated with insulin in the cross-sectional analysis ( 14 ), but was of borderline statistical significance (p=0.07) in the one-year prospective analysis ( 13 ). Detrimental cross-sectional associations of sedentary time with insulin were also observed in participants of the European RISC study (801 participants aged 30-60 yr, healthy adults), though the associations were attenuated following adjustment for total activity ( 2 ). In the AusDiab accelerometer-study sample (169 participants aged 30-87 yr, general population), we observed detrimental associations of sedentary time with waist circumference, triglycerides, and 2-hr plasma glucose ( 22 , 24 ). It is important to point out that the participants in all of these studies were primarily White adults of European descent ( 2 , 13 , 14 , 22 , 24 ). A key next step for this research is to examine whether the associations are consistent across different racial/ethnic groups, which is becoming feasible with the public availability of large, multi-ethnic population-based datasets, particularly NHANES ( 29 , 44 ).

Objectively-Assessed Sedentary Behavior: AusDiab Findings

We used accelerometers to assess sedentary time in a sub-sample of the AusDiab study participants. Sedentary time was defined as accelerometer counts below 100 per minute (see above), and was associated with a larger waist circumference, and more-adverse 2-h plasma glucose and triglyceride profiles as well as a clustered metabolic risk score ( 22 , 24 ). The associations of sedentary time with these biomarkers (with the exception of triglycerides) remained significant, following adjustment for time spent in moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity ( 22 , 24 ).

As logically would be expected, sedentary time and light-intensity activity time were highly negatively correlated (r = -0.96): more time spent in light-intensity activity is associated with less time spent sedentary. This suggests that it may be a feasible approach to promote light intensity activities as a way of ameliorating the deleterious health consequences of sedentary time. Our evidence suggests that having a positive light intensity/sedentary time balance (that is; spending more time in light-intensity than sedentary time) is desirable, since light-intensity activity has an inverse linear relationship with a number of cardio-metabolic biomarkers ( 22 , 24 ).

Breaks in Sedentary Time: AusDiab Findings

One of the intriguing findings from our accelerometer-measurement studies is that breaks in sedentary time (as distinct from the overall volume of time spent being sedentary) were shown to have beneficial associations with metabolic biomarkers ( 21 ). Sedentary time was considered to be interrupted if accelerometer counts rose up to or above 100 counts per minute ( 21 ). This can include behaviors that result in a transition from sitting to a standing position or from standing still to beginning to walk. Figure 2 is based on data from two of our AusDiab accelerometer-study participants, showing a simple contrast between adults who have the same total volume of sedentary time, but who break up that time in contrasting patterns. The person whose data is shown in the right-hand panel of Figure 2 (the “Breaker”) interrupts their sedentary time far more frequently than the person whose data are shown on the left panel (the “Prolonger”).

Breaks in sedentary time: same amount of sedentary time, but different ways of accumulation. CPM = counts per minute. (Reprinted from Dunstan DW, Healy GM, Sugiyama T, Owen N. ‘Too Much Sitting’ and Metabolic Risk – has modern technology caught up with us? US Endocrinology . 2009; 5(1) , 29-33. Copyright © 2009 Touch Briefings. Used with permission.)

Independent of total sedentary time, moderate-to-vigorous intensity activity time and mean intensity of activity, we found that having a higher number of breaks in sedentary time was beneficially associated with waist circumference, body mass index, triglycerides, and 2-h plasma glucose ( 21 ). Figure 3 shows objectively-measured waist circumference across quartiles of breaks in sedentary time. Those in the bottom quarter of the “breaks” distribution had, on average, a 6cm larger waist circumference than did those in the top quarter of that distribution ( 21 ).

Associations of breaks in sedentary time with waist circumference (based on data from Healy et al . ( 21 )).

These findings on breaks in sedentary time provide intriguing preliminary evidence on the likely metabolic-health benefits of regular interruptions to sitting time, which we would argue are additional to the benefits that ought to accrue from reducing overall sedentary time. Interestingly, in a recent study ( 5 ), patterns of sedentary time accumulation (but not total sedentary time) were shown to differ among four groups of adults with various activity patterns (healthy group with active occupation; healthy group with sedentary occupation; group with chronic back pain; group with chronic fatigue syndrome). As we will go on to propose, while we believe that these are strongly-indicative findings, there is the need to determine whether these associations can be confirmed in experimental manipulations of sitting time in the laboratory, and in intervention studies where sedentary time is reduced or broken up in naturalistic settings such as the domestic environment or the workplace.

Sedentary Behavior and Mortality

The significance of the evidence on the adverse cardio-metabolic health consequences of prolonged sitting time is underscored by findings from a mortality follow-up of participants in the Canada Fitness Surveys. Canadians who reported spending the majority of their day sitting had significantly poorer long-term mortality outcomes than did those who reported that they spent less time sitting. These relationships with mortality were consistent across all levels of a self-report measure of overall sitting time. Participants estimated the broad fractions of their waking hours that were spent sitting. Importantly, the sitting time-mortality relationships were apparent even among those who were physically active, and were stronger among those who were overweight or obese ( 25 ). In a follow-up of AusDiab study participants over 6.5 yr, high levels of TV time were significantly associated with increased all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality ( 9 ). Each one hour increment in TV time was found to be associated with an 11% and an 18% increased risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality, respectively. Furthermore, relative to those watching less TV (< 2 hours/day), there was a 46% increased risk of all-cause and an 80% increased risk of cardiovascular disease mortality in those watching four or more hours of TV per day, independent of traditional risk factors such as smoking, blood pressure, cholesterol and diet, as well as leisure-time physical activity and waist circumference. A recent study from the United States ( 47 ) examined sedentary behaviors in relation to cardiovascular mortality outcomes, based on 21 yr of follow-up of 7744 men. Those who reported spending more than 10 h a week sitting in automobiles (compared to less than four hours a week), and more than 23 h of combined television time and automobile time (compared to less than 11 hours a week) had an 82% and 64% greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, respectively. TV time alone was not a significant predictor ( 47 ).

RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

Looking back through a sedentary behavior lens.

Emerging findings on sedentary behavior suggest a different perspective through which findings of earlier physical activity and health research studies may be re-examined (we thank William L. Haskell for stimulating these observations). For example, physical activity epidemiology studies that have assessed physical activity comprehensively have often included measures of sitting time, which has been used mainly to derive overall daily energy expenditure estimates. We would predict (perhaps boldly) that if such studies were to be revisited, with further analyses being conducted using sitting time as a distinct exposure variable, that strong evidence would be found for deleterious effect on subsequent health outcomes, independent of those related to physical inactivity.

Another potentially fruitful area in which the relevance of existing evidence could be re-examined, are the NASA zero-gravity studies. Comparing findings of those studies (that relate to the metabolic consequences of extreme muscular unloading) with those of the recent findings from inactivity physiology ( 16 , 17 ) may lead yield further insights relating to the underlying biology of prolonged sedentary time.

Research on physical activity and health had its roots in early occupational epidemiological studies that assessed workers in jobs that primarily involve sitting as the comparison groups, against which the protective benefits of physically-active work were highlighted ( 4 , 17 , 18 ). In the perspective of the new evidence that we have highlighted, conducting further occupational epidemiology studies using new objective measurement capabilities, and examining a range of cardio-metabolic and inflammatory biomarkers as intermediate outcomes, could yield valuable insights.

Sedentary Behavior Research Strategy

Our population-health research program on sedentary behavior is guided by the behavioral epidemiology framework ( 34 , 36 ). Figure 4 shows six research phases. As we demonstrate above, evidence within the first phase (examining the relationships of sedentary behavior to cardio-metabolic biomarkers and health outcomes) has strengthened rapidly over the past 10 yr.

Behavioral epidemiology framework: phases of evidence for a population-health science of sedentary behaviour.

Prolonged periods of sitting in people’s lives need to be measured precisely (phase ii). Their contextual determinants — that is, behavior settings ( 32 , 35 ) — need to be identified in domestic, workplace, transportation and recreation contexts (phase iii). We have argued previously for a research focus on the distinct environmental determinants of sedentary behaviors, in contexts where they can be amenable to intervention ( 31 , 32 , 37 , 41 ). The feasibility and efficacy of such interventions need to be tested rigorously (phase iv). Importantly, public health policy responses need to be informed by evidence from all of these phases. Compared to the challenges for physical activity and public health, sedentary behavior may be less of a ”moving target” in this context, and may be shown to be a tractable public health objective ( 4 ).

The Population-Health Science of Sedentary Behavior: Research Opportunities

Different sedentary behaviors and their interactions with physical activity need to be examined in a range of contexts. For example, we have demonstrated leisure-time Internet and computer use is related to overweight and obesity in Australian adults ( 45 ), and that habitual active transport reduces the impact of TV time on body mass index ( 40 ). Having identified these relationships, our program is now broadening the evidence base through research with other populations. New studies include work with the large population-based dataset from the NHANES from the United States, examining potential racial and ethnic differences in the relationships of total sedentary time and breaks in sedentary time with cardio-metabolic biomarkers. We have demonstrated significant associations of TV time with excess body weight among high school students in regional mainland China ( 52 ). In the context of the rapid economic development and increasing urbanisation among the populations of many developing countries, documenting the health consequences of reductions in physical activity and increases sedentary time will be crucial for informing preventive-health measures.

Studies with high-risk groups are also required. For example, we examined accelerometer-derived physical activity, sedentary time and obesity in breast cancer survivors, showing physical activity to be protective, but no deleterious relationship for sedentary time ( 28 ). Significant prospective relationships of TV time with weight gain over three years were identified in a large, population-based cohort of Australian colorectal-cancer survivors ( 48 ). More such etiologic research is needed, to examine potential relationships between too much sitting and the development of other diseases that have been linked to metabolic risk factors.

For the second phase of the behavioral epidemiology framework (measurement; see Fig. 4 ), there is the need to identify the reliability and validity of self-report instruments ( 6 ). Population-based descriptive epidemiology studies using high-quality measures are needed. For example, we have shown that Australian adults with lower levels of educational attainment and living in rural areas our more likely to be in the highest TV time categories ( 7 ). We have also demonstrated that, for Australian women, being in the higher categories of TV time can be associated with a broader pattern of leisure-time sedentary behavior and being less likely to meet physical activity recommendations ( 39 ). Using American Cancer Society data from a large population-based study, we identified clusters of adults in the four hours or more category of TV time who are less-educated, obese, and snack while watching TV ( 26 ).

Studies have begun to identify the environmental correlates of sedentary behavior, and initial findings appear puzzling. Among urban Australians, lower levels of objectively-assessed neighborhood walkability (poorly connected streets, low levels of residential density, and limited access to destinations) were found to be associated with higher TV time in women ( 41 ). However, a recent study in the city of Ghent, Belgium showed higher levels of walkability to be associated with higher amounts of accelerometer-assessed sedentary time ( 46 ). These apparently contradictory outcomes require further research investigation. Such findings have potential implications for the emerging area of research on built environment/obesity relationships, within which sedentary behavior is likely to have a significant role ( 30 ).

Research on sedentary behaviors also needs to be extended beyond the promising initial studies of TV time, to understand the potential health consequences of other common sedentary behaviors. Evidence on the metabolic correlates of prolonged sitting in motor vehicles would be particularly informative, in the light of recent evidence on relationships with premature mortality ( 47 ). The social and environmental attributes associated with high levels of time spent sitting in automobiles also need to be identified.

The highest priority for the sedentary behavior research agenda is to gather new evidence from prospective studies, human experimental work and intervention trials. There is the particular need to build on the promising findings on relationships of sedentary time — overall sitting time, TV time and time sitting in automobiles — with premature mortality ( 9 , 25 , 47 ). Controlled experimental studies with humans should also be particularly informative. For example, we are currently conducting a laboratory study experimentally manipulating different “sedentary break” conditions, and examining associated changes in cardio-metabolic biomarkers (focusing on triglycerides, glucose and insulin).

Field studies are also needed on the feasibility and acceptability of reducing and breaking up occupational, transit and domestic sedentary time. For example, in a weight-control intervention trial for adults with type 2 diabetes, we are testing the impact of a sedentary behavior reduction intervention module and examining behavioral and biomarker changes associated with reducing and breaking up sedentary time. There are multiple research opportunities that explored through integrating sedentary behavior change intervention into physical activity trials. When accelerometer data are gathered from such studies, sedentary time measures can be derived ( 21 , 22 , 24 ), and unique hypotheses may readily be tested. It is imperative that the field now moves to obtain such evidence through intervention trials, which will take the science beyond the inherent logical limitations of cross-sectional evidence.

Eleven Research Questions for a Science of Sedentary Behavior

• Can further prospective studies examining incident disease outcomes confirm the initial sedentary behavior/mortality findings?
• Can sedentary behavior/disease relationships be identified through re-analyses of established prospective epidemiological data sets, by treating sitting time as a distinct exposure variable?
• What are the most valid and reliable self-report and objective measures of sitting time for epidemiological, genetic, behavioural, and population-health studies?
• Are the TV-time-biomarker relationships for women pointing to important biological and/or behavioral gender differences?
• What amounts and intensities of activity might be protective, in the context of prolonged sitting time?
• What genetic variations might underlie predispositions to sit, and greater susceptibility to the adverse metabolic correlates?
• What is the feasibility of reducing and/or breaking up prolonged sitting time, for different groups (older, younger) in different settings (workplace, domestic, transit)?
• If intervention trials show significant changes in sitting time, are there improvements in the relevant biomarkers?
• What are the environmental determinants of prolonged sitting time in different contexts (neighborhood, workplace, at home)?
• What can be learned from the sitting time and sedentary time indices in built-environment/physical activity studies?
• Can evidence on behavioral, adiposity, and other biomarker changes be gathered from “natural experiments” (for example, the introduction of height-adjustable workstations or new community transportation infrastructure)?

PRACTICAL AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF A SCIENCE OF SEDENTARY BEHAVIOR

Practical and policy approaches to addressing too much sitting as a population-health issue would involve innovations on multiple levels. For example, public information campaigns might emphasize reducing sitting time as well as increasing physical activity. There might be more widespread use of innovative technologies that can provide more opportunities to reduce sitting time (for example, height-adjustable desks) or new regulations in workplaces to reduce or break-up extended periods of job-related sitting. Active transport modes could be promoted not only as opportunities for walking, but also as alternatives to the prolonged periods of time that many people spend sitting in automobiles. Providing non-sitting alternatives at community entertainment venues or events might also be considered. If evidence on the deleterious health impact of too much sitting continues to accumulate as we predict, and if such innovations are implemented, there will be the need for systematic evaluations, particularly of approaches that have the potential for broader dissemination.

Anecdotally, the recent experience in Australia has been that initiatives in the final phase of the behavioral epidemiology framework (“using the relevant evidence to inform public-health guidelines and policy”) have already begun. This is happening largely on the basis of the first-phase evidence presented in Figure 4 (“identifying relationships of sedentary behavior with health outcomes”). For example, the Australian National Preventative Health Task Force Report includes explicit recommendations to address prolonged sitting in the workplace in the context of reducing the burden of overweight and obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The Western Australian state division of the Heart Foundation included reducing sitting time in a 2009 state-wide mass media campaigns for obesity prevention. In the state of Queensland, Health Promotion Queensland (a cross-departmental body) commissioned an evidence-based review in 2009 on health impacts and interventions to reduce workplace sitting, with view to future practical initiatives. Thus, there are growing expectations in Australia that too much sitting is a real and substantial risk to health. However, it remains to be seen whether the science of sedentary behavior will deliver consistent new findings in all of the research areas that are needed to inform such innovations (see Fig. 4 ).

Given the consistency of research findings reported thus far on sedentary behavior and health, we expect that in the near future there will be a stronger body of confirmatory evidence from prospective studies and intervention trials. Furthermore, we predict that the next iteration of the Physical Activity and Public Health recommendations of ACSM/AHA will include a statement on the health benefits of reducing and breaking up prolonged sitting time.

Acknowledgments

Funding Disclosure: Owen is supported by a Queensland Health Core Research Infrastructure grant and by National Health and Medical Research Council Program Grant funding (#301200; #569940). Healy is supported by a NHMRC (#569861)/National Heart Foundation of Australia (PH 08B 3905) Postdoctoral Fellowship. Dunstan is supported by a Victorian Health Promotion Foundation Public Health Research Fellowship.

Sedentary Lifestyle: Overview of Updated Evidence of Potential Health Risks

Affiliations.

• 1 Department of Family Medicine, Jeju National University Hospital, Jeju, Korea.
• 2 Department of Family Medicine, Jeju National University School of Medicine, Jeju, Korea.
• PMID: 33242381
• PMCID: PMC7700832
• DOI: 10.4082/kjfm.20.0165

One-third of the global population aged 15 years and older engages in insufficient physical activities, which affects health. However, the health risks posed by sedentary behaviors are not well known. The mean daily duration of sedentary behavior is 8.3 hours among the Korean population and 7.7 hours among the American adult population. Sedentary lifestyles are spreading worldwide because of a lack of available spaces for exercise, increased occupational sedentary behaviors such as office work, and the increased penetration of television and video devices. Consequently, the associated health problems are on the rise. A sedentary lifestyle affects the human body through various mechanisms. Sedentary behaviors reduce lipoprotein lipase activity, muscle glucose, protein transporter activities, impair lipid metabolism, and diminish carbohydrate metabolism. Furthermore, it decreases cardiac output and systemic blood flow while activating the sympathetic nervous system, ultimately reducing insulin sensitivity and vascular function. It also alters the insulin-like growth factor axis and the circulation levels of sex hormones, which elevates the incidence of hormone-related cancers. Increased sedentary time impairs the gravitostat, the body's weight homeostat, and weight gain, adiposity, and elevated chronic inflammation caused by sedentary behavior are risk factors for cancer. Sedentary behaviors have wide-ranging adverse impacts on the human body including increased all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease mortality, cancer risk, and risks of metabolic disorders such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and dyslipidemia; musculoskeletal disorders such as arthralgia and osteoporosis; depression; and, cognitive impairment. Therefore, reducing sedentary behaviors and increasing physical activity are both important to promote public health.

Keywords: All-Cause Mortality; Cancer; Exercise; Metabolic Disease; Physical Activity; Sedentary Behavior.

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IELTS Writing: problem and solution essay

In this lesson you’ll learn how to answer problems/solutions questions in IELTS Writing . This type of questions gives you an issue and asks you to describe some common problems associated with it and propose some possible solutions.

• See problem-solution question sample
• Learn how to generate ideas
• Learn band 9 answering strategies
• See full band 9 answer

Question sample

This is an example of problem-solution question in IELTS Writing:

Despite a large number of gyms, a sedentary lifestyle is gaining popularity in the contemporary world.

What problems are associated with this?

What solutions can you suggest?

How to answer the question?

Before starting to write your answer, you should think of 1-2 problems and 1-2 solutions, so you know what to write about. In our case:

Problems associated with sedentary lifestyle :

• problems with backbone (osteoporosis, scoliosis)

Solutions :

• promote walking and cycling as safe and attractive alternatives to motorized transport
• promote visiting gyms and doing exercises

Now, after we’ve generated some ideas for our essay, it’s time to use them in our writing .

Remember : it’s not enough to simply state these facts, you should also extend the ideas in your writing.

Band 9 answer structure

Although there are many possible ways to structure your essay, we’ll use this band 9 answer structure that has been approved by many IELTS examiners:

Band-9 essay structure:

• Introduction
• Body paragraph 1 - problems
• Body paragraph 2 - effects

Let’s take a look at each of these sections in detail:

Introduction Write your introduction in two sentences:

• Sentence 1 - paraphrase the statement (you can use ‘nowadays/today/these days’ to start):

These days a sedentary lifestyle is becoming more and more popular despite a big number of sport facilities.

• Sentence 2 - say what you’ll write about in your essay:

This essay will discuss the main problems associated with this epidemic and propose some possible solutions to avoid them.

Body paragraph 1- problems

• Sentence 1 - summarise the main problems of inactive lifestyle:

The main problems caused by inactive lifestyle are obesity and various spine disorders.

• Sentences 2-3 - state and explain the first problem (you can also give an example). It’s very important to expand your opinion! Imagine that your examiner doesn’t know this subject at all and you have to explain everything in detail:

A growing number of body research shows that long periods of physical inactivity raise a risk of becoming overweight. This is because people burn fewer calories and easily gain weight.

• Sentences 4-5 - describe the second problem (as usual, expand your opinion). You can give an example and use linking words ‘ moreover’ , ’ what’s more’ or ‘ also ’ to start:

What’s more, a lot of studies show that so-called ‘sitting disease’ often results in posture and backbone problems. Due to constant sitting, person loses muscle tissue and curves spine, developing numerous spinal diseases. For example, it has been proven that about 80% of people experience backache at least once a week.

Body paragraph 2 - solutions

• Sentence 1 - briefly state the main solutions:

In my opinion, the best solution to this problem is promoting active lifestyle.

• Sentences 2-3 - write the first solution and explain it:

Firstly, millions of people stay less active because they use cars instead of walking. Therefore, an effective way to make people more active is to advertise walking and cycling as safe and attractive alternatives to motorized transport.

Moreover, inactive lifestyle is gaining popularity because nowadays a lot of people prefer passive rest to workouts in the gym. And the best way to avoid the hazards of unhealthy living is to obtain a regular dose of physical activity. Thus, promoting gyms and regular exercising would increase the level of activity.

Write your conclusion in 2 sentences by summing up the problems and solutions you’ve written in your body paragraphs:

In conclusion, leading a sedentary lifestyle causes a lot of health problems, including obesity and spinal diseases. The most effective solution is to increase the level of fitness among the society by advertising physical activity.

Band 9 answer sample

These days a sedentary lifestyle is becoming more and more popular despite a big number of sport facilities. This essay will discuss the main problems associated with this epidemic and propose some possible solutions to avoid them.

The main problems caused by inactive lifestyle are obesity and various spine disorders. A growing number of body research shows that long periods of physical inactivity raise a risk of becoming overweight. This is because people burn fewer calories and easily gain weight. What’s more, a lot of studies show that so-called ‘sitting disease’ often results in posture and backbone problems. Due to constant sitting, person loses muscle tissue and curves spine, developing numerous spinal diseases. For example, it has been proven that about 80% of people experience backache at least once a week.

In my opinion, the best solution to these problems is promoting active lifestyle. Firstly, millions of people stay less active because they use cars instead of walking. Therefore, an effective way to make people more active is to advertise walking and cycling as safe and attractive alternatives to motorized transport. Moreover, inactive lifestyle is gaining popularity because nowadays a lot of people prefer passive rest to workouts in the gym. And the best way to avoid the hazards of unhealthy living is to obtain a regular dose of physical activity. Thus, promoting gyms and regular exercising would increase the level of activity.

(268 words)

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Healthy Lifestyle — Sedentary Lifestyle: Analysis of Health Risks

Sedentary Lifestyle: Analysis of Health Risks

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Published: Sep 12, 2023

Words: 734 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, the health risks of sedentary living, the sedentary lifestyle's impact on personal and social values, the role of sedentary behaviors.

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• Healthy Lifestyle Essay

Essay on Healthy Lifestyle

The top secret of being physically fit is adopting a healthy lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle includes regular exercise, a healthy diet, taking good care of self, healthy sleep habits, and having a physically active daily routine. Lifestyle is the most prevailing factor that affects one’s fitness level. A person leading a sedentary lifestyle has a low fitness level whereas living a healthier life not only makes a person fit but also extends life. Good health has a direct impact on our personality. A person with a good and healthy lifestyle is generally more confident, self-assured, sociable, and energetic.

A good and healthy lifestyle allows one to relish and savor all the pleasures in life without any complications. Even all the wealth is less valuable when compared to sound health. Having all the luxuries in the world does not fulfill its purpose when one is continuously ill, depressed, or suffering from a significant health complication. A healthy person has a clear and calm perception of everything without prejudice. His actions and decisions are more practical and logical and are hence more successful in life.

A good habit is a key factor for a healthy lifestyle. To maintain a stable body and mind, one needs to inculcate good habits. Waking up early in the morning, regularly exercising or a good morning walk helps to keep our body energetic and refresh our mind. Maintaining a balanced and nutritious diet throughout the day is vital for maintaining a good lifestyle. Too much indulgence in alcohol or smoking excessively is not at all appropriate for a healthy lifestyle.

Self-Discipline

Self-discipline is important for maintaining a good lifestyle. When we are self-disciplined then we are more organized and regular in maintaining good health. A disciplined life is a regulated life. A man without discipline is a ship without a rudder. Discipline needs self-control. One who cannot control himself can seldom control others. The level of discipline and perseverance largely determines a person’s success. Self-discipline is the act of disciplining one’s own feelings, desires, etc. especially with the intention of improving oneself. It strengthens our willpower. The stronger our will power the positive will be our decision. It enables us to conquer our own self.

Punctuality

Punctuality is the habit of doing things on time. It is the characteristic of every successful person and everyone must observe punctuality in order to win success in life. Punctuality is necessary for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It should become a habit with us. A punctual person is able to fulfill all his responsibilities and hence is treated with respect in society. It is needed in every walk of life.

Diet is an important component for overall fitness and works best in combination with exercise. A balanced diet and exercise regularly help to maintain good health. It is necessary to reduce weight if one is overweight or obese, failing which one cannot be physically fit for long. For people with obesity, more exercise and a strict regime are necessary, preferably under guidance. There are many ways of making the diet healthier.

Use less sugar and salt while cooking food.

Use less oil while cooking. Avoid deep-frying as much as possible. 

Eat more fruits daily. They provide more vitamins and minerals to our bodies.

Add sprouts of gram and moong dal to at least one meal in a day. Add fiber to your diet. Use whole grains instead of polished cereals. Eat lots of salad and yogurt.

Eat fermented food regularly. Fermented food contains many useful bacteria that help in the process of digestion.

Prevention of Lifestyle Diseases

By adopting a healthy lifestyle one can avoid lifestyle diseases. The following are some ways in which we can prevent lifestyle diseases.

Eat a balanced diet that contains important nutrients. One must include more fresh fruits and green vegetables in the diet. Refrain from eating junk food. Stay away from foods that contain large amounts of salt or sugar.

Exercise regularly. Spend more time outdoors and do activities such as walking, running, swimming, and cycling.

One must avoid overindulgence in alcohol, junk food, smoking, and addiction to drugs and medicines.

Avoid spending too much on modern gadgets like mobile phones, laptops, televisions, etc. Spend time on these gadgets for short intervals of time only.

Set a healthy sleeping routine for every day. Waking early in the morning and going to bed early at night should be a daily habit. Lead an active life.

Unhealthy Lifestyle

Bad food habits and an unhealthy lifestyle such as less or no physical activity may lead to several diseases like obesity, high blood pressure or hypertension, diabetes, anemia, and various heart diseases. An unhealthy lifestyle reduces productivity and creativity in a person. It also adversely affects moods and relationships. It leads to depression and anxiety in human beings.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle not only makes a person confident and productive but also drives him to success. A person with a healthy lifestyle will enjoy both personal and social life.

FAQs on Healthy Lifestyle Essay

What Do You Understand about a Healthy Lifestyle?

A healthy lifestyle is a lifestyle that includes regular exercise, a healthy diet, taking good care of self, healthy sleep habits and having a physically active daily routine.

How is Punctuality Important for Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle?

Punctuality is the habit of doing things on time. It is the characteristic of every successful person and everyone must observe punctuality in order to win success in life. It should become a habit with us. A punctual person is able to fulfil all his responsibilities and hence is treated with respect in society. It is needed in every walk of life.

What Happens When One Does Not Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle?

When one does not maintain a healthy lifestyle then several diseases like obesity, high blood pressure or hypertension, diabetes, anaemia and various heart diseases can occur. An unhealthy lifestyle reduces productivity and creativity in a person. It also adversely affects moods and relationships. It leads to depression and anxiety in human beings.

What are the Main Factors that Determine a Good and Healthy Lifestyle?

In order to maintain a good and healthy lifestyle, one must be self-disciplined, self-motivated, maintain punctuality and have good habits like waking early in the morning and maintain a regular fitness regime and a balanced and nutritious diet.

Is writing an essay hard?

Essay writing is a difficult task that needs a great deal of study, time, and focus. It's also an assignment that you can divide down into manageable chunks such as introduction, main content, and conclusion. Breaking down and focusing on each individually makes essay writing more pleasant. It's natural for students to be concerned about writing an essay. It's one of the most difficult tasks to do, especially for people who aren't confident in their writing abilities. While writing a decent essay is difficult, the secret to being proficient at it is reading a lot of books, conducting extensive research on essential topics, and practicing essay writing diligently.

Why is it important for one to aspire to have a healthy lifestyle?

A healthy lifestyle is an important way for reducing the occurrence and impact of health problems, as well as for recovery, coping with life stressors, and improving the overall quality of life. An increasing collection of scientific data suggests that our habits have a significant impact on our health. Everything we eat and drink, as well as how much exercise we get and whether we smoke or use drugs, has an impact on our health, not just in terms of life expectancy but also in terms of how long we may expect to live without developing chronic illness. A large proportion of fatalities are caused by conditions such as heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, joint disease, and mental illness. A healthy lifestyle can help to avoid or at least delay the onset of many health issues.

How to download the Essay on Healthy Lifestyle from the Vedantu website?

The Essay on Healthy Lifestyle, which is accurate and well-structured, is available for download on the Vedantu website. The Essay is accessible in PDF format on Vedantu's official website and may be downloaded for free. Students should download the Essay on Healthy Lifestyle from the Vedantu website to obtain a sense of the word limit, sentence structure, and fundamental grasp of what makes a successful essay. Vedantu essay is brief and appropriate for youngsters in school. It is written in basic English, which is ideal for kids who have a restricted vocabulary. Following the Vedantu essay ensures that students are adequately prepared for any essay subject and that they will receive high grades. Click here to read the essay about a healthy lifestyle.

Who prepares the Essay for Vedantu?

The Essay on Healthy Lifestyle designed for the Vedantu is created by a group of experts and experienced teachers. The panel of experts has created the essay after analyzing important essay topics that have been repeatedly asked in various examinations. The Essays that are provided by Vedantu are not only well-structured but also accurate and concise. They are aptly suited for young students with limited vocabulary. For best results, the students are advised to go through multiple essays and practice the topics on their own to inculcate the habits of time management and speed.

What constitutes a healthy lifestyle?

Healthy life is built on the pillars of a good diet, frequent exercise, and appropriate sleep. A healthy lifestyle keeps people in excellent shape, it also gives you more energy throughout the day, and lowers your chance of developing many diet-related chronic diseases. Healthy living is considered a lifestyle choice that allows you to enjoy more elements of your life. Taking care of one's physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being is part of living a healthy lifestyle.

Good Nutrition, Eating Right and proper diet.

Getting Physically Fit, Beneficial Exercise and working out often.

Adequate rest and uninterrupted sleep.

Proper Stress Management.

Self-Supportive Attitudes.

Positive Thoughts are encouraged.

Positive Self-Image and body image.

Inner Calmness and peace.

Openness to Your Creativity and Self-care.

Trust in Your Inner Knowing and your gut feeling.

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Sedentary Lifestyle VS. Active Lifestyle [Infographic]

To summarize, a sedentary lifestyle is lethal. It substantially increases the risk of many diseases, is strongly linked to obesity, and shortens lifespans. Despite this, many adults are still leading sedentary lifestyles. According to Mayo Clinic , 50-70% of people sit at least six hours per day, and 20-35% of people spend over four hours every day watching TV.

Even more frightening, statistics gathered by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services reveal that only one in three adults achieve the recommended amount of physical activity each week, and more than 80% of adults do not meet the guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities.

With more than one-third of U.S. adults living with obesity, it’s more important now than ever to educate yourself on the effects of sitting too much and start working towards an active lifestyle.  Check out this infographic below to learn a bit more about how a sedentary lifestyle affects your health and quality of life:

Do you know if you’re sitting too much? Chances are, yes – you’re most likely sitting too much. Even if you hit the gym for 30 minutes after work each day, your lifestyle can still be classified as “sedentary” if you spend the rest of your day on your bum.

The good news is that an active lifestyle is more achievable than you might think. All it takes is some effort to move more and sit less, while getting in your 150 minutes of exercise each week. Follow a few of these tips to live a more active lifestyle:

• Use a standing desk at work
• Deskercise while you work
• Get up and walk for five minutes each hour of the workday
• Limit time spent watching TV and on the computer
• Go outside more
• Walk around while talking on the phone
• Start a walking club at your office
• Stand while eating lunch
• Take the stairs
• Start an outdoor hobby (gardening, photography, fishing)
• Get up and move during commercial breaks
• Do light stretches for a few minutes every hour of the workday

Don’t pay the hefty price of sitting too much. Start educating yourself and others on the health benefits of regular exercise and start moving more today!

How do you combat a sedentary lifestyle? Comment below!  

Images: courtesy of Freepik.com

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Essay 140 – Sedentary lifestyle is gaining popularity in the contemporary world

Gt writing task 2 / essay sample # 140.

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

Despite a large number of gyms, sports centres and parks, a sedentary lifestyle is gaining popularity in the contemporary world.

Why is so? What problems are associated with this?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words.

Model Answer:

Even though a substantial number of sports and outdoor facilities has been improved throughout the world, the sedentary lifestyle has reached an epic proportion in contemporary society. The phenomenon depends on certain factors and this leads to many issues associated with health.

To commence with, many individuals lead inactive lifestyles owing to their sedentary job nature, indoor and digital leisure activities and, often, due to the lack of opportunity. Many contemporary occupations are sedentary in nature involving no vigorous physical activity. To illustrate, white-collar employees work long hours that involve sitting at a desk in front of a computer screen. In addition to this, people also tend to surf the internet, watch TV, or play computer games as leisure pursuits. In simple words, many a time, they are utterly exhausted after office, and therefore engage in motionless activities like reading, watching TV, listening to music, or using a smartphone. Besides, with the hectic pace of modern life, it is hard for many to find sufficient time for exercise. But most importantly, the lack of willpower and determination prevents many from leading an active life.

A sedentary lifestyle involves very little physical activities with very low energy expenditure and thereby causes several severe health problems including reduced metabolism. In consequence, it can cause obesity contributing to chronic diseases, such as heart disease, cardiac arrest, and diabetes to name but a few examples. In addition, as the duration of screen time increases, it is highly likely that the spine meets with pressure, which will, in turn, increase the probability of distort natural curve. As a result, various spinal issues, including the slipped disc, stem from this bad posture.

To conclude, the sedentary lifestyle poses a real risk of various health complications. Therefore, we should incorporate adequate physical activities into our daily routine, and our determination can make a big difference.

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IELTS Writing Agree/Disagree Essay Topics [Task-2]

IELTS agree/disagree essay types are commonly asked topics in Writing Task – 2 . For these type of questions you can either agree or disagree with the statement, or you can adopt a balanced approach.

In this lesson, you will learn how to write a band 7+ answer using THREE sample questions and their model answers. We will adopt the following structure which has proven to be the most suited for agree or disagree essay questions. Practice this structure on the PDF version of the IELTS Writing Task 2 answer sheet .

• INTRODUCTION (Choose an opinion; whether you agree or disagree?)
• BODY PARAGRAPHS (Write relevant ideas with examples to support your viewpoint)
• CONCLUSION (Summarise your writing and provide a logical conclusion)

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task. Write at least 250 words.

Essay Topic #1 – Euthanasia

Euthanasia or Mercy Killing is the need of modern life. Do you agree or disagree? Give relevant ideas in support of your point of view.

RELATED: IELTS Discuss Both Views Essay Structure With Sample Answers

Essay Topic #2 – Sedentary Lifestyle

Modern lifestyle has become sedentary. Many people believe that sedentary lifestyle is the mother of all diseases. Do you agree or disagree? Write relevant examples to support your position on this.

Essay Topic #3 – Non Violence

Some people say that non-violence has lost its relevance in the modern world. To what extent do you agree or disagree? Give examples to strengthen your point of view.

I hope you learnt well about band 7+ structures and vocabulary for these IELTS Writing Task – 2 Agree/Disagree Essay Topics.

All the best !

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Sedentary Lifestyle Essay

Obesity and being overweight are major problems in today’s society. A sedentary lifestyle is a major contributing factor to these conditions.

Obesity and being overweight can lead to many health problems, including diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. These conditions can shorten your life expectancy and make you more likely to suffer from a disability.

Living a sedentary lifestyle also increases your risk of developing certain types of cancer, such as ovarian cancer.

Making small changes to your lifestyle can have a big impact on your health. Getting regular exercise and eating a healthy diet are two of the best ways to reduce your risk of obesity and being overweight.

A sedentary lifestyle is a medical phrase that refers to a way of life that consists of little or no physical activity. People who live a sedentary lifestyle are more prone to depression, low self-esteem, and health problems. Depression is more common among those who engage in a sedentary lifestyle. Because they are unengaged with the general public, they will quickly become lonely, sad, and hopeless.

Low self-esteem is another outcome of a sedentary lifestyle. When people do not take care of their bodies, they will start to see themselves in a negative light. They may believe that they are not worthy of love and attention. Obesity and being overweight are two health issues that are commonly associated with a sedentary lifestyle. When people do not get enough physical activity, they are more likely to gain weight.

This can lead to a host of other health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Nutrition is another area that is affected by a sedentary lifestyle. People who are inactive tend to eat unhealthy foods since they do not burn many calories. This can lead to deficiencies in vitamins and minerals.

People who spend their days seated, reading, watching television, and using a computer are frequently found in this category. They’ll be pale, dreary looking individuals that aren’t joyful or vibrant. Furthermore, they will have negative thinking and be unproductive. In addition, people who remain active are less likely to suffer from depression. Sedentary behavior has the potential to damage one’s self-esteem. People with a sedentary lifestyle may have low confidence in themselves.

Overweight and obesity is a result of irregular exercise, which makes individuals feel as though they are under additional-special attention. As a result, they are afraid to have a good social life. Sedentary living leads to an unfavorable self-assessment in other words. Moreover, there are numerous health issues linked with being sedentary. Cardiovascular diseases, stroke, and diabetes are just a few examples.

Obesity is a condition characterized by an excess of body fat. Obesity isn’t just a cosmetic concern. It’s a medical problem that increases your risk of other diseases and health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and certain cancers.

Overweight is defined as an abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health. A crude population measure of overweight is the body mass index (BMI), which is a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of his or her height in meters (kg/m2). Obesity is defined as having a BMI equal to or greater than 30.

The cause of obesity and overweight is complex. There are many factors that contribute including diet, physical activity, family history, and sleep habits. Obesity occurs over time when you eat more calories than you burn. The body stores these extra calories as fat.

Obesity and overweight are major risk factors for a number of chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke, and certain types of cancer. These conditions can lead to increased health care costs and decreased quality of life.

A sedentary lifestyle is unquestionably harmful to our health. Irregular exercise not only slows down the metabolic system, but it also degrades the immune system. As a result, a sedentary lifestyle has a detrimental influence on our health and makes our bodies unable to function properly. It’s not just about being active; it’s also about making positive changes in your life.

Obesity is one of the most common problems caused by a sedentary lifestyle. When we are obese, we are more likely to suffer from other health problems such as heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Obesity is also a leading cause of cancer. So if you’re obese, you’re not only putting yourself at risk for all of these diseases, but you’re also increasing your chances of getting cancer.

Overweight is another problem associated with a sedentary lifestyle. Being overweight puts us at risk for all of the same health problems as obesity, but it also increases our risk for joint problems and sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a serious condition that can lead to death. So if you’re overweight, you need to be especially careful about your health.

Nutrition is also important for our health. A healthy diet helps to keep our bodies functioning properly and gives us the energy we need to get through the day. However, a sedentary lifestyle can lead to poor nutrition. When we are inactive, we tend to eat more unhealthy foods and we don’t get the nutrients we need from our food. This can lead to deficiencies in vitamins and minerals, which can cause serious health problems.

So if you want to be healthy, you need to make sure that you’re getting enough exercise and eating a healthy diet. Don’t let a sedentary lifestyle take over your life. Get up and move around, and make sure that you’re getting the nutrients you need. Your health will thank you for it!

Obesity and being overweight are epidemic in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than one-third of U.S. adults (35.7%) are obese, and another one-third (33.8%) are overweight but not obese. Obesity and being overweight increase your risk for many chronic diseases and conditions, including heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, sleep apnea, and osteoarthritis.

The health risks associated with obesity and being overweight are serious. Obesity is a complex condition with many causes, including genetic factors, overeating, sedentary lifestyle, lack of physical activity, medical conditions such as hypothyroidism or Cushing’s syndrome, and taking certain medications such as steroids. Obesity can also be caused by psychological factors such as stress or emotional eating.

Overweight and obesity are major public health problems in the United States. Obesity rates have more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents over the past 30 years. Obesity is now epidemic among young people, with one in three children and adolescents affected. The prevalence of obesity among adults has also increased dramatically over the past 30 years, from 15 percent to 35 percent.

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• climate change

America’s Young Farmers Are Burning Out. I Quit, Too

I n 2023, Scott Chang-Fleeman—a young farmer like me—put down his shovel. A post on his Instagram read, “Shao Shan Farm, in its current form, is going on indefinite hiatus.” From the outside, the burgeoning farm had the makeup of one that could stand the test of time. In reality, his experience of farm ownership was wrought with challenges.

A farmer in his late 20s, Chang-Fleeman started Shao Shan Farm in 2019 to reconnect with his roots and provide a source of locally grown heritage Asian vegetables to the Bay Area. He quickly secured a clientele and fan base—two of the greatest hurdles of starting a farm—and became the go-to for San Francisco’s high-end Asian eateries.

But after four years of creative pivots to withstand unexpected hurdles that included financial stress, severe drought, and a global pandemic, Chang-Fleeman made a choice that many young farmers are considering: to leave farming behind. Why he left and what could have kept him on the land are critical questions we must address if we are to have a sustainable and food-secure future.

The USDA Census of Agriculture reported that in 2017, nearly 1 in 4 of the 3.4 million agricultural producers in the US were new and beginning farmers. Many of these new farmers are doing exactly what it seems American agriculture needs: starting small farms. According to the most recent data from the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) in 2019 , farms with annual sales of less than $100,000 accounted for about 85% of all U.S. farms. And though not all of these small-scale farms are necessarily organic, small farms are more likely to grow a diversity of crop types, use methods that reduce negative impacts on the climate, increase carbon sequestration, and tend to be more resilient in the face of climate change.

Read More: How Extreme Weather Is Affecting Small Farmers Across the U.S.

There has been a growing interest among younger people in recent years in sustainable and organic farming practices, as well as in local food systems. This interest has led people in their 20s and 30s to enter into small-scale farming, particularly in niche markets such as organic produce, specialty crops, and direct-to-consumer sales.

As a result, both congressional Democrats and Republicans have maintained that encouraging young people to farm is of utmost importance in ensuring the stability of our food system. But getting young people into farming may not be the problem. Keeping them on the farm may be the hardest part.

I should know. I quit too.

Chang-Fleeman got his start in agriculture right out of college, where he spent several years working at the on-campus farm. As a third-generation Chinese American, he noticed a distinct lack of Asian vegetables at local farmers markets, particularly those that were grown organically, and suspected there would be a demand should a supply exist. He started trialing some varieties, and his suspicions were quickly affirmed when samples of his choy sum caught the attention of chef Brandon Jew of Mister Jiu’s, a contemporary Chinese eatery with a Michelin star in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Jew provided some seed funds for what was to become Shao Shan Farm in 2019.

During the first year running his farm, Chang-Fleeman focused his sales on his relationships with local restaurants, while attending some farmers' markets sales to supplement income. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, he lost all of his restaurant accounts overnight.

Like many farmers at that time, he pivoted to a CSA model, offering farm boxes that provide a household with an assortment of vegetables for the week.

“So literally over a night, I reworked my crop plan” he told me. “Just to get through that year, or through that season, not knowing how long [the pandemic was going to] last.”

As if a global pandemic wasn’t enough, in 2021, California entered a drought, and he lost the ability to irrigate his crops come mid-summer, which meant a hard stop for production.

“I was hoping to hit some sort of a rhythm, and every year felt a bit like starting from scratch,” Chang-Fleeman reflected.

Throughout farm ownership, he worked side jobs to compensate for the slow build of business income and the fact that he could only afford to pay himself a monthly salary of $2,000. He regularly worked 90 hours a week. At the same time, farm expenses were on the rise.

“The cost of our packaging went up like three times in one year and the cost of the produce didn't change,” he explained. “Our operating expenses went up like 30%, after COVID.”

In four short years, Chang-Fleeman experienced an avalanche of extenuating circumstances that would bring most farm businesses to their knees. But the thing that finally catalyzed the closing of his business was burnout. He relayed the experience of the exhaustion and stress building over time until he reached a breaking point. “If I don’t stop now, it’s going to kill me,” he recalled thinking.

Chang-Fleeman’s burnout reminded me of my own story. In the fall of 2018, I took what ended up being a two-month medical leave from an organic farm I managed in Northern California in order to try to try to resolve a set of weird symptoms that included dizzy spells and heart palpitations. If you know anything about farming, fall is not the time to be absent. It’s peak harvest time and the culmination of all of your work is underway. But as my medical anomaly continued to worsen, I came no closer to getting back to work. After many doctor visits, several trips to the specialist, a flurry of blood tests, and a week of heart monitoring, it took one Xanax to solve the mystery.

Read More: ‘ They’re Trying to Wipe Us Off the Map.’ Small American Farmers Are Nearing Extinction

The prolonged physical stress that I had been harboring at work had triggered the onset of panic disorder, a nervous system affliction that had led me into a near-chronic state of fight or flight mode, causing a swath of physical symptoms not typically associated with “anxiety.”

For me, this was a wake-up call. I turned to a slew of Western and naturopathic remedies to alleviate my symptoms, but ultimately, removing the stressors of farm management was the thing that allowed me to, mostly, reach a nervous system balance. Even still, six years later, I’m constantly navigating the ‘new normal’ of this diagnosis.

A pilot study conducted by agriculture researcher Josie Rudolphi and her colleagues in 2020 found that of 170 participants, approximately 71% met the criteria for Generalized Anxiety Disorder. By comparison, in the US, an estimated 18% of adults experience an anxiety disorder. Rudolphi’s work indicates that these disorders maybe three times more prevalent in young farmer and rancher populations.

This rang true as I went from farm to farm trying to figure out what so often goes wrong in a new farm operation. Again and again mental health was a through-line. Collette Walsh, owner of a cut-flower operation in Braddock, PA, put it to me bluntly: "I usually get to a point in late August or early September, where there’s a week where I just cry.”

How can we build a farming economy that helps young farmers not only stay, but also thrive on the land? The Farm Bill , a federal package of legislation that provides funding for agricultural programs, is one route. As the reboot of the Farm Bill approaches, it’s a critical time to ask these questions and advocate for policies that support young farmers and the barriers they’re facing in maintaining a long-lasting career in agriculture.

Take for instance, Jac Wypler, Farmer Mental Health Director at the National Young Farmer Coalition (Young Farmers), who oversees the Northeast region’s Farmer and Rancher Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN). The organization was established by the Farm Bill in 2018 to develop a service provider network for farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural workers that was dedicated to mental well-being. Through the network of service providers she directs, called “Cultivemos,” Wypler and her colleagues utilize a multi-tiered approach to address mental health in farming spaces. Cultivemos partners provide direct support in moments of stress and crisis as well as peer-to-peer support spaces.

An expanded (and subsidized) program that scales efforts like Cultivemos to a size commensurate with the young work force is clearly needed. But it’s only part of the picture.

“While we believe that it is important to make sure that farms, farmers, and farmworkers are getting direct support around their mental health,” Wypler explained. “We need to alleviate what is causing them stress.” 

Cultivemos works to address the structural root causes of stress which can include climate change, land prices, and systemic racism, to name a few. They focus on communities that are disproportionately harmed by these structural root causes, specifically Black, Indigenous, and other farmers of color. Finally, they seek to make this impact by regranting funding directly into the hands of these farmers.

“The way I think of regranting is that the USDA and these large institutions are the Mississippi River of funding.” Wypler says. “We’re trying to get the funding into these smaller rivers and tributaries to disperse these funds and shift that power dynamic and leadership dynamic.”

The next Farm Bill cycle will be critical in ensuring this work is continued. In November of 2023, lawmakers signed a stopgap funding bill that allows for a one-year extension on the 2018 Farm Bill. Lawmakers are currently in deliberations over the bill until September when it will be up for a vote. Young Farmers underscores the importance of the appropriations process, which is when program areas that are authorized in the farm bill are allocated funding.

Back-to-the-landism has waxed and waned throughout the last hundred years, booming in the pre-Depression years of the 1930s, dying in the war years and then storming back in the 60s and 70s. When my generation’s own farming revolution came along in the early 2000s, I was similarly swept up. I imagined when I chose to farm that the path would be lifelong. What I hadn’t accounted for, as a determined, starry-eyed changemaker, was the toll that a decade of farming through wildfires, evacuations, floods, power outages, and a global pandemic would take on my mental health.

Don’t get me wrong:  I was happy working hard with my two feet planted firmly on the land. In a better world I and people like Scott Chang-Fleeman would have kept getting our hands dirty, making an honest, if modest, living providing good and wholesome food in synch with the rhythms of the planet.

But to borrow a word from the world of ecology, being a young farmer in today’s economy is “unsustainable.” The numbers don’t work economically and, eventually, any mind trying to square this un-squarable circle is going to break. The economic, physical and mental challenges are all interconnected.

It’s hard to find an American, Republican or Democrat, red or blue state resident that doesn’t want more young hands on the land. We all rightly see agriculture as a pathway to personal fulfillment and a way to make our food supply healthier and more secure. But words and intentions can only do so much. We must answer these very real problems with very real subsidy.

If we don’t, my generation might be the last to think of going “back-to-the-land” as something actually worth doing.

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An NPR editor who wrote a critical essay on the company has resigned after being suspended

FILE - The headquarters for National Public Radio (NPR) stands on North Capitol Street on April 15, 2013, in Washington. A National Public Radio editor who wrote an essay criticizing his employer for promoting liberal reviews resigned on Wednesday, April 17, 2024, a day after it was revealed that he had been suspended. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

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NEW YORK (AP) — A National Public Radio editor who wrote an essay criticizing his employer for promoting liberal views resigned on Wednesday, attacking NPR’s new CEO on the way out.

Uri Berliner, a senior editor on NPR’s business desk, posted his resignation letter on X, formerly Twitter, a day after it was revealed that he had been suspended for five days for violating company rules about outside work done without permission.

“I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems” written about in his essay, Berliner said in his resignation letter.

Katherine Maher, a former tech executive appointed in January as NPR’s chief executive, has been criticized by conservative activists for social media messages that disparaged former President Donald Trump. The messages predated her hiring at NPR.

NPR’s public relations chief said the organization does not comment on individual personnel matters.

The suspension and subsequent resignation highlight the delicate balance that many U.S. news organizations and their editorial employees face. On one hand, as journalists striving to produce unbiased news, they’re not supposed to comment on contentious public issues; on the other, many journalists consider it their duty to critique their own organizations’ approaches to journalism when needed.

In his essay , written for the online Free Press site, Berliner said NPR is dominated by liberals and no longer has an open-minded spirit. He traced the change to coverage of Trump’s presidency.

“There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed,” he wrote. “It’s frictionless — one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.”

He said he’d brought up his concerns internally and no changes had been made, making him “a visible wrong-thinker at a place I love.”

In the essay’s wake, NPR top editorial executive, Edith Chapin, said leadership strongly disagreed with Berliner’s assessment of the outlet’s journalism and the way it went about its work.

It’s not clear what Berliner was referring to when he talked about disparagement by Maher. In a lengthy memo to staff members last week, she wrote: “Asking a question about whether we’re living up to our mission should always be fair game: after all, journalism is nothing if not hard questions. Questioning whether our people are serving their mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful and demeaning.”

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo revealed some of Maher’s past tweets after the essay was published. In one tweet, dated January 2018, Maher wrote that “Donald Trump is a racist.” A post just before the 2020 election pictured her in a Biden campaign hat.

In response, an NPR spokeswoman said Maher, years before she joined the radio network, was exercising her right to express herself. She is not involved in editorial decisions at NPR, the network said.

The issue is an example of what can happen when business executives, instead of journalists, are appointed to roles overseeing news organizations: they find themselves scrutinized for signs of bias in ways they hadn’t been before. Recently, NBC Universal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde has been criticized for service on paid corporate boards.

Maher is the former head of the Wikimedia Foundation. NPR’s own story about the 40-year-old executive’s appointment in January noted that she “has never worked directly in journalism or at a news organization.”

In his resignation letter, Berliner said that he did not support any efforts to strip NPR of public funding. “I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism,” he wrote.

David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder

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Faith Ringgold Dies at 93; Wove Black Life Into Quilts and Children’s Books

A champion of Black artists, she explored themes of race, gender, class, family and community through a vast array of media and later the written word.

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By Margalit Fox

Faith Ringgold, a multimedia artist whose pictorial quilts depicting the African American experience gave rise to a second distinguished career as a writer and illustrator of children’s books, died on Saturday at her home in Englewood, N.J. She was 93.

Her death was confirmed by her daughter Barbara Wallace.

For more than a half-century, Ms. Ringgold explored themes of race, gender, class, family and community through a vast array of media, among them painting, sculpture, mask- and doll-making, textiles and performance art. She was also a longtime advocate of bringing the work of Black people and women into the collections of major American museums.

Ms. Ringgold’s art, which was often rooted in her own experience, has been exhibited at the White House and in museums and galleries around the world. It is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the American Craft Museum in New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; and other institutions.

For Ms. Ringgold, as her work and many interviews made plain, art and activism were a seamless, if sometimes quilted, whole. Classically trained as a painter and sculptor, she began producing political paintings in the 1960s and ’70s that explored the highly charged subjects of relations between Black and white people, and between men and women, in America.

“Few artists have kept as many balls in the air as long as Faith Ringgold,” the New York Times art critic Roberta Smith wrote in 2013, reviewing an exhibition of her work at ACA Galleries in Manhattan. “She has spent more than five decades juggling message and form, high and low, art and craft, inspirational narrative and quiet or not so quiet fury about racial and sexual inequality.”

The hallmarks of Ms. Ringgold’s style included the integration of craft materials like fabric, beads and thread with fine-art materials like paint and canvas; vibrant, saturated colors; a flattened perspective that deliberately evoked the work of naïve painters; and a keen, often tender focus on ordinary Black people and the visual minutiae of their daily lives.

Critics praised Ms. Ringgold’s work from the beginning. But wide renown, in the form of exposure in the country’s most prestigious museums, largely eluded her until midlife — a consequence, she often said, of her race, her sex and her uncompromising focus on art as a vehicle for social justice.

“In a world where having the power to express oneself or to do something is limited to a very few, art appeared to me to be an area where anyone could do that,” she told The Orlando Sentinel in 1992. “Of course, I didn’t realize at the time that you could do it and not have anyone know you were doing it.”

Ms. Ringgold ultimately became best known for what she called “story quilts”: large panels of unstretched canvas, painted with narrative scenes in vivid acrylics, framed by quasi-traditional borders of pieced fabric and often incorporating written text. Meant for the wall rather than the bed, the quilts tell of the joys and rigors of Black lives — and of Black women’s lives in particular — while simultaneously celebrating the human capacity to transcend circumstance through the art of dreaming.

One of her most celebrated story quilts, “Tar Beach,” completed in 1988, gave rise to her first children’s book, published three years later under the same title. With text and original paintings by Ms. Ringgold, the book, like the quilt, depicts a Black family convivially picnicking and slumbering on the roof of their Harlem apartment building on a sultry summer’s night.

“Tar Beach” was named a Caldecott Honor Book by the American Library Association and one of the year’s best illustrated children’s titles by The New York Times Book Review. It has endured as a childhood staple and garnered a string of other honors, including the Coretta Scott King Award, presented by the library association for distinguished children’s books about African American life.

Ms. Ringgold went on to illustrate more than a dozen picture books, most with her own text, including “Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky” (1992), about Harriet Tubman, and “If a Bus Could Talk: The Story of Rosa Parks” (1999).

Her eminence in the field is all the more striking in that she never set out to be a children’s author in the first place.

A Child of Harlem

The youngest child of Andrew Louis Jones and Willi (Posey) Jones, Faith Willi Jones was born in Harlem on Oct. 8, 1930. Her father, a New York City sanitation truck driver, left the family when Faith was about 2, though he remained in close contact.

Faith’s mother, a seamstress, later became a fashion designer with her own label, Mme. Willi Posey, and an atelier in Harlem. She was so successful that she was able to move with her children to Sugar Hill, the exclusive Harlem enclave whose residents also included Duke Ellington, Dinah Washington and Thurgood Marshall.

“We all lived together, so it wasn’t a surprise to see these people rolling up in their limos,” Ms. Ringgold told The Times in 2010. “And that said to us, you can do this, too.”

An asthmatic child, Faith was often kept home in bed, where she passed the time drawing and painting. Her father brought her her first easel, salvaged from his trash-collection rounds.

Theirs was a storytelling family, and as an adult, Ms. Ringgold recalled with particular pleasure the narrative gifts of her elder brother, Andrew.

“We went to the movies at a time when there were already great stories, but they didn’t have any Black people in them — or if they did, you didn’t like the way the characters were,” she said in an interview for the NPR program “All Things Considered” in 1999. “So my brother would come home and he would rewrite everything.”

One day in the 1940s, when Andrew was a teenager, he was dispatched on an errand for their mother to a white neighborhood in Upper Manhattan. There, a gang of white youths surrounded him and beat him nearly to death. He was refused treatment at a local hospital.

He recovered, but he was never the same, Ms. Ringgold said. He became addicted to drugs and died of an overdose in 1961.

The young Ms. Ringgold graduated from George Washington High School in Upper Manhattan. At about 20, she eloped with a childhood sweetheart, Robert Earl Wallace, and had two daughters in quick succession. But she soon discovered that her husband, a classical and jazz pianist, was a drug addict; they separated in 1954 and divorced two years later. (Mr. Wallace also died of an overdose, of heroin, in 1961.)

Ms. Ringgold earned a bachelor’s degree in art and education from the City College of New York in 1955 and a master’s in art there in 1959. In 1962, she married Burdette Ringgold.

From 1955 to 1973, Ms. Ringgold taught art in the New York City public school system, in Harlem and the Bronx, while trying to establish a career as a painter. At first she produced landscape paintings in the vein of the European masters she had studied in college.

“We copied Greek busts, we copied Degas, we copied everything,” she said in an interview for the catalog of “Faith Ringgold: A 25-Year Survey,” a 1990 retrospective at the Fine Arts Museum of Long Island that toured nationally. “It was generally thought that we weren’t experienced enough to be original, and if we were original we were sometimes up for ridicule.”

Little by little, Ms. Ringgold cast about for an aesthetic that reflected her own life and times. By the 1960s, influenced by the writings of James Baldwin and LeRoi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka), along with the rich visual polyphony of African art and the rhythms of the jazz she had heard and loved as a child, she had found it.

Her work from this period includes the “Black Light” series, a set of portraits in which she depicted her African American subjects using a specially conceived palette of rich dark colors.

It also includes a 1967 painting, “American People Series #20: Die,” which proved a professional watershed. Twelve feet long, the canvas depicts a violent profusion of men, women and children — Black and white, some wielding weapons, most spattered with blood — whose roiling tangle recalls Picasso’s 1937 masterpiece, “Guernica.”

“Die” became the centerpiece of her first solo exhibition, held that year at Spectrum Gallery in New York. The show helped her stake her claim as a significant American artist.

A Voice of Protest

In 1968, Ms. Ringgold helped organize a protest by Black artists, long marginalized by the art establishment, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Two years later, she took part in a protest at the Museum of Modern Art centering on women artists.

“Today, some 25 years later,” she wrote in 1995, “nothing much has changed at the Modern except which white man gets the next show.”

The word “man” was telling, for Ms. Ringgold had long since come to believe that her efforts on behalf of Black artists were of little avail to those who also happened to be female. By the 1970s, she was producing more overtly feminist work.

Ms. Ringgold, who had learned to sew from her mother, began augmenting her arsenal with the traditional materials of “women’s work”: needles, thread and cloth. She made masks, cloth dolls and soft fabric sculptures, some of them life-size, that were exhibited on their own and used in her performance pieces about racial and sexual disenfranchisement.

She also embarked on her “Slave Rape” series, a set of paintings depicting the fate of Black women in the antebellum South, which she framed with borders of patterned cloth.

Collaborating with her mother, Ms. Ringgold made her first full quilt, “Echoes of Harlem,” a montage of painted Black faces and pieced fabric, in 1980. It was a modern manifestation of a centuries-old Black tradition.

“I think of quilts as the classic art form of Black people in America,” Ms. Ringgold told The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa., in 2005. “When African slaves came to America, they couldn’t do their sculpture anymore. They were divorced from their religion. So they would take scraps of fabric and make them into coverlets for the master and for themselves.”

In 1983, frustrated at her inability to find a publisher for a memoir she had written, Ms. Ringgold began incorporating narrative text into her quilts. Few artists of the period were doing anything of the kind.

The first of her story quilts, “Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima?,” reimagined the original stereotyped figure — the fat, frumpy Black woman, drawn straight from a minstrel show, whom many Black people considered offensive. On Ms. Ringgold’s quilt, Jemima has been transformed into a Black feminist role model: trim, elegant and a successful entrepreneur.

In the late 1980s, after an editor at Crown Publishers saw “Tar Beach,” Ms. Ringgold was asked to transform that quilt into a picture book. The resulting work tells the story of 8-year-old Cassie Lightfoot — the daughter of the picnicking family — who one magical night in 1939 flies over the rooftops of the city to soar above the George Washington Bridge.

“I can fly — yes, fly,” Ms. Ringgold’s text reads. “Me, Cassie Louise Lightfoot, only eight years old and in the third grade, and I can fly. That means I am free to go wherever I want for the rest of my life.”

Ms. Ringgold’s art was acquired by many private collectors, among them Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey. It was also commissioned for public spaces, including the 125th Street subway station on the Lenox Avenue line in Manhattan, where two immense mosaic murals, collectively titled “Flying Home,” depict storied Black figures like Josephine Baker, Malcolm X and Zora Neale Hurston.

For what is very likely the most widely utilized public space of all, the internet, she created a Google Doodle to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2012.

Ms. Ringgold was the subject of significant retrospectives at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Rutgers University and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washington. In 2016, not long after her 85th birthday, MoMA acquired “Die” for its permanent collection.

More recently, in 2022, she received a major retrospective at the New Museum in Manhattan. The show, which filled three floors, “makes clear that what consigned Ringgold to an outlier track half a century ago puts her front and center now,” Holland Cotter wrote in his review in The Times. The exhibition later traveled to the Musée Picasso in Paris.

Ms. Ringgold, who for many years divided her time between her home in Englewood, N.J., and California, where she was a faculty member of the University of California, San Diego, also taught in New York at the Bank Street College of Education, Pratt Institute and elsewhere.

In 1999, she established the Anyone Can Fly Foundation, which promotes the work of artists of the African diaspora from the 18th century onward.

Among her many laurels are a Guggenheim fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts awards for painting and sculpture, and a spate of honorary doctorates.

Her other books include her memoir, “We Flew Over the Bridge,” published by Little, Brown & Company in 1995.

In addition to her daughter Barbara, a linguist, Ms. Ringgold is survived by another daughter, Michele Wallace, a prominent feminist writer and cultural critic; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Her husband, Burdette Ringgold, died in 2020.

Though Ms. Ringgold had felt the need to draw and paint from the time she was a girl, she said late in life that her career sprang from an even more urgent imperative.

As she told an interviewer in 2008, “If I woke up white in America, I wouldn’t be an artist.”

Emmett Lindner contributed reporting.

Margalit Fox is a former senior writer on the obituaries desk at The Times. She was previously an editor at the Book Review. She has written the send-offs of some of the best-known cultural figures of our era, including Betty Friedan, Maya Angelou and Seamus Heaney. More about Margalit Fox