Lifting a lot of boxes has surprising benefits

A brief piece this month, because we moved house on Friday and all is complete chaos here!

For various reasons, we did the removal ourselves…that is, myself, my husband and my teenage sons carried all our furniture and worldly belongings down 2 flights of stairs and into a van, and then, on various trips, carried it from the van and into our new house. The dog got in the way a LOT!

I spent about 5 hours straight, 2 days in a row, picking up stuff, some of it very heavy, and moving it down stairs. And at the end of each day I felt yes, tired, but also good in a “I’ve-used-my-muscles-today” way. Yes, I felt weary, and my legs ached a bit, but my back felt strong. And boy, did I sleep well (when we had managed to locate bedding and put the mattresses down in between gaps in the furniture). Is this how our ancestors felt after a day of hunting and gathering?

I think we’re probably meant to be living like this, to lift, to squat, to move stuff, to be active. We are not designed for sitting all day, but unfortunately modern life seems to have forced this on many of us.

Some thoughts on this with 2 different hats on:

• with my Alexander Technique hat on I would say that sitting all day can

  bring about many musculoskeletal ills, not least that bent over C -shaped posture with a pulled back head that is often the consequence of sitting over a screen for a long time. This shape has many knock-on effects, not only on our muscle and skeletal frame, but also on the organs which are squashed and pushed out of shape. We develop aches and pains, tight tendons, loose muscle, we breathe badly, digestion is impeded…

• with my nutritionist hat on, sitting all day and not being active is going to play havoc with metabolic function. Movement promotes take up of blood sugar from eating; muscle is literally the “sponge” that will use that blood sugar for energy - otherwise, it goes straight to fat cells. Also, our cells start to become resistant when insulin comes knocking on the door, asking for glucose to be let in – otherwise known as insulin resistance. And insulin resistance, metabolic dysfunction in other words, is upstream from so many of today’s inflammatory conditions.

I have my work cut out for me in the next week or so, trying to get the

house sorted and the boxes emptied. I am already quite an active person – I do daily yoga and dog walks, a weekly run with a friend, and an outdoor fitness class. But I have been a bit resistant to actually going to the gym and doing some lifting, despite being bombarded with messages from various sources that this is exactly what I should be doing at my age to protect my bones and maintain my muscle. Funny that it took a house move for me to get the motivation for this one! But right now I feel very motivated and will be looking at options at local gyms.

Meanwhile, wish me luck with the boxes….

Marie