Burn belly fat while sitting down? Yes!

If you spend long hours working at a desk, driving your car, or not moving very much, research at Kansas State University shows a way to activate an enzyme in your body to burn off more fat as you work.

When you sit unmoving for hours at work, and your muscles are dormant, you switch off a natural chemical in your body. It’s called lipoprotein lipase, or LPL. It stimulates the cells to take in fat or triglycerides and use it for energy.

To get LPL going again, take more breaks from sitting and move around the office. Yes, you can try to work standing up, but even if you just pace back and forth every half hour, or get up and move your body, you can get the same effect on LPL

In fact, moving around also activates many of the genes we have that increase metabolism, like AMPK and PPARγ1 … which can then increase LPL production by as much as 400 percent!

LPL also has another very good effect. It reduces two types of cholesterol that can be dangerous when you have inflammation – large very low-density lipoproteins (VLDL1), and smaller VLDL (VLDL2).

Keeping cool, drinking water or oolong tea, and laughing are all ways to increase metabolism while seated, but make sure you take breaks, stretch, or do things like leg extensions while seated in order to increase LPL.