Unless you are currently packed into a rush hour subway car, riding an escalator, or waiting in another interminable line at the DMV, there is a good chance that you are sitting down as you read this sentence. There's a good chance that you do a lot of sitting these days: for a full day at work, on your commute both ways, during dinner at home, all capped off with a scintillating evening of Netflix and your white wine of choice. Sitting feels great! It is comfortable, and restful, and relaxing. Unfortunately, the amount of time you spend perched comfortably on your butt might also might be methodically inching you towards a nightmarish future in which you spend the bulk of your golden years unable to exercise, or run, or even walk. (Congratulations to those of you who just reflexively stood up and winced.)

A team of researchers at George Washington University and the National Cancer Institute recently examined a decade of data collected from some 130,000 AARP members in order to examine the relationship, if any, between living a sedentary lifestyle and relative mobility at retirement age. Unsurprisingly, the respondents who reported engaging in more frequent moderate-to-vigorous physical activity were the spryest of all their peers. Hopefully, the idea that sitting and not exercising is a less-than-idea combination for your overall physical health is not something you needed to read in an academic journal in order to understand.

It is the other variables examined by the researchers that are, to use a technical term, alarming as hell: Among people who watched more than five hours of TV per day, nearly twice as many reported having some trouble getting around, while among those who kept their evening screen time below two hours, significantly more respondents reported no reductions in their mobility. Overall, the more time a respondent spent sitting, the higher their odds of developing some form of old-man or old-woman creakiness. One of the study's authors concluded to NPR that "sitting and watching TV for long periods, especially in the evenings, has got to be one of the most dangerous things that older people can do," which is, again, a statement that tempts me to delete my Netflix subscription all by itself.

What does this mean for you? Again, scientifically speaking, look for little ways to reduce the staggering amount of time that you spend on your ass. Massage therapists and personal trainers will be the first to tell you about how prolonged sitting affects your flexibility and fitness, so if you can get a standing desk, that's obviously a wonderful start. Although doing so doesn't address all the sitting you do at home, the steps you need to take to fix that aren't particularly onerous. For example, the researchers highlighted one study that observed a 30 percent reduction in mortality risk among less-active older people who replaced one hour of sitting per day with an hour of "nonexercise" activity, such as walking, gardening, or household chores. And when it comes to time spent staring at a screen after work, they recommend standing up at least every 30 minutes—which, coincidentally, is a pretty convenient interval if you happen to be spending a rainy afternoon catching up on your binge-watching queue.

"If you insist on staying seated during that 15 second intervalbetween episodes," DiPietro says, "at least stand up, march in place,jump around, kick legs—do anything to move about for at least one totwo minutes."

Living in the era of Peak TV is great fun, but that becomes decidedly less true if enjoying it eventually renders you immobile. For those of you who don't want to accidentally out-live your ability to hop off the couch and go for a pleasant, carefree afternoon stroll, now is a very good time to start doing it more often.

Watch Now:Nick Offerman, Undercover OnlineJay Willis is a staff writer at GQ covering news, law, and politics. Previously, he was an associate at law firms in Washington, D.C. and Seattle, where his practice focused on consumer financial services and environmental cleanup litigation. He studied social welfare at Berkeley and graduated from Harvard Law School... Read moreRelated Stories for GQNetflixNetflix