Your workout in the morning doesn’t necessarily cancel out a day of sitting afterwards, as each one affects your body differently. There's an encouraging side to it though: if you're up and about throughout your day, doing the school run, the shopping, the housework, chasing after children, even without a formal workout, you're probably doing more than you realise.

In the last issue, we talked about getting more from the exercise time we actually have. But there's another part to this: what happens during the rest of the day, and how much of that time already counts for more than we give it credit for?

I’ve spent years at a desk, corporate finance is not exactly a job where you're on your feet all day, and most days I didn't have time for a proper workout. On the days I did manage one, I assumed it somehow made up for sitting at a desk for the rest of the day. It turns out it is a bit more complicated than that. Researchers have found associations between sedentary time and bone and muscle health, independently from how much you exercise.

Research in women has found that more sedentary time, particularly longer periods of sitting without getting up, is associated with lower bone density at the hip. Some studies have found this association even after taking physical activity into account. A separate study in older adults found that longer, unbroken periods of sitting were associated with smaller and less favourable calf-muscle characteristics, regardless of how active they were otherwise.

Worth mentioning: genetics plays a major role in bone density. Research suggests that genetic factors may explain around 50–80% of the variation in bone density between people. But that doesn’t make your efforts pointless. Diet, exercise, hormones, and lifestyle all play a role in your bone health.

So what can we do about how much we sit? Most of us have jobs, commutes and evenings that involve sitting, that's modern life. If your days already involve a fair bit of moving around, that's working in your favour. For the rest of us, try to break up sitting time with some movement. Most of us do this without thinking, going for coffee, walking between meetings, taking the stairs or going on a short walk all mean you're spending a little less time completely still.

The interesting thing is that even light activity can be beneficial when it replaces sitting time. It doesn’t have to become another workout. Movement like this seems particularly relevant as we get older, when maintaining muscle and bone becomes increasingly important. Don't read this as another thing you need to add to your already busy day, it’s just about moving a little more often rather than exercising more.

One small thing to try this week: if a lot of your day involves being still, whether that's a desk, a long car or train journey, or an evening on the sofa, set a reminder to stand up or change position for a minute or two every hour.

Finding ways to move regularly throughout the day is a habit worth building over time, the kind of small thing that quietly adds up over the years, which is what this Journal is all about.

More soon.

Next time: why balance deserves just as much attention as strength.