Combine your breaks. That works!

An alcohol break is a healthy choice. We told you before that combining breaks is easier than leaving one and just doing the other. So taking a smoke break during an IkPas month is a good idea. If this is not necessary because you do not smoke, then your phone use may be a thing or your 'seating behaviour'. Which habits do you (temporarily) put a line through?

A bad habit consists of recurring actions that irritate yourself and others. For example: biting your nails, putting everything off until the very last moment or constantly comparing yourself with others. And how about a phone addiction and chair use disorder?

Phone Addiction

The average time we spend on our phone is - don't worry - 2.5 hours a day. That is 17.5 hours per week, or 70 hours per month and converted 35 days per year. OK, you get the idea. That is an incredible amount of time lost. Such telephone use not only costs you a lot of time, but also a mountain of energy. It causes stress, because you are always 'on'. Your concentration suffers and it promotes loneliness and sadness. Enough like that. What can you do about it?

• Don't take your phone upstairs when you go to sleep.
• So start the day without a phone.
• Grab your phone at set times and make agreements about how long you can sit on your phone. So at 10 am you check your emails and at 3 pm you send the apps you want to send.
• Turn off the notifications.
• Don't do everything digitally. Just read books and keep your appointments in a paper diary.
• Need more tips? The books 'I break up' and 'Living without smartphone stress' are highly recommended.

Disorder in chair use

An article recently appeared in the international scientific journal Journal of Physical Activity and Health in which addiction doctor Robert van de Graaf, cardiologist Leonard Hofstra and professor Erik Scherder called for the use of chairs to be treated as an addiction.

This is what TNO says

Figures from the TNO (Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research) show that we Dutch have started to 'sit down' more: 10.1 hours a day. And that's not wrong, because the health risks are obvious. By sitting for a long time, often and a lot, you have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and brain diseases.

Sitting less or moving more?

The solution is simple you would think. More exercise means you sit less. But it doesn't seem to work that way. It is easier to focus on reducing unhealthy behavior (sitting less) than adopting new and healthy behavior (more exercise). Moving more is ultimately a logical consequence of reducing chair use.

Addiction doctor Robert van de Graaf finds our sitting behavior so worrying that he called for the use of chairs to be treated as an addiction. The solution according to Van de Graaf: get rid of your comfortable chairs. Because if you're not comfortable, you're fine.

Curious about the sitting test that the addiction doctor conducted? Read the whole article here on nu.nl.

Combine multiple breaks

Drinking alcohol, smoking, excessive telephone use and also excessive sitting: all examples of challenges that we have been dealing with for a long time or not even very long. It's good to take a look at your own habitual behavior every now and then. Just like you do now during IkPas. Because a break, in any area, can be refreshing.

Do you want to know how to break a bad habit? Then read the article: '5 tips to break a bad habit and create a good habit‘.