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Standing more instead of sitting was associated with a modest increase in daily energy expenditure that may add up to weight loss in the long term, according to a meta-analysis.

When standing, people burned an extra -- 0.1 calories for women and 0.19 calories for men per minute. At that rate, a 65-kg person (143.3 lbs) could burn an extra 54 calories a day just by standing instead of sitting for 6 hours, Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues estimated.

"Assuming no increase in energy intake, this difference in energy expenditure would be translated into the energy content of about 2.5 kg [5.5 lbs] of body fat mass in 1 year," they reported online in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

"However, whether such a small difference in energy expenditure will truly translate into long-term weight loss is yet to be proved, as compensatory mechanisms in basal metabolic rate, increased caloric intake as a result of more muscle activity, or other factors may negate the benefit of spending a few extra calories a day," they acknowledged.

Nonetheless, it is still possible that more standing and less standing can result in lower lipids and fasting blood sugar levels.

"This is the first systematic review and meta-analysis evaluating the difference in energy expenditure between sitting and standing in an adult population ... The results also show that the difference in energy expenditure is more modest than is generally stated in studies or review papers recommending the substitution of sitting with standing," Lopez-Jimenez's group wrote.

They hypothesized that the gender difference in calories burned standing reflects the effect of greater muscle mass in men, reasoning that energy expenditure is proportional to the muscle mass activated while standing.

Included in the meta-analysis were 46 studies, of which 10 were randomized trials, with 1,184 individuals in total. Most studies were of moderate-to-fair quality, the investigators acknowledged, as none matched all criteria to be considered high-quality. Another caveat was the majority white population in their dataset.

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