Believe it or not, we’re not eating any more than we did 100 years ago. We’re just moving a whole lot less.

“There is not a relationship between obesity and caloric intake,” says Dr. James Levine, an obesity expert at the Mayo Clinic. Our national weight gain is driven primarily by the fact that we’re far more sedentary than we used to be. Our caloric intake, however, has remained the same. Ergo, obesity epidemic.

(As I write this, I’m sitting in front of a computer, where I sit for a goodly number of hours most days of the week. Not burning many calories at the moment.)

Not surprisingly, then, exercise is also the key to weight loss. Lots of exercise. More than many of us trapped in the modern age have time for.

This week the Archives of Internal Medicine published a study that looked at how much exercise overweight women need to do in order to lose weight, and keep it off. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere tracked 191 overweight and obese women for 24 months. The women were assigned one of four different weight loss programs — various types of diets, counseling and exercise regimens.

Most regained lost weight because they could not do enough physical activity. The 47 women who succeeded in losing at least 10 percent of their weight and keeping off for two years exercised for an average of at least 68 minutes per day. They were burning about 2,000 calories a week — about what most adult women eat in a day — with moderate to vigorous physical activity.

Earlier this week when I was sitting at my desk talking to Levine, he was walking — at his desk. Levine has designed a treadmill-desk combo that allows him walk while he works at the computer or talks on the phone. Steelcase, the office furniture manufacturer, is now selling it under the name Walkstation. He designed it because he recognizes that most people just can’t exercise enough outside of their jobs and the other demands of modern life. We have to move more when are at work and watching TV.

“I’m walking at one mile per hour,” he said. “That will be 140 calories per hour. I can burn an extra thousand calories per day. ”

As you can see in this photo, he’s not even breaking a sweat.

“Day time physical activity has a lot to answer for,” he said. Creating opportunities during the day to promote simple movement as a way to burn calories is phenomenally important, he said.

He got the idea from studying people who fidget. They burn a whole lot more calories than people who don’t just because they move around a lot more.

Now, having written this, it’s time to stop typing and start fidgeting. Or something. Do you build movement into your day?

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