Our Sedentary Lifestyle – Today, we perform much less physical labor, but the habit of eating three daily meals prevails. Our bellies have grown accustomed to feeling full; in fact, many of us feel a vague “emptiness” when they are not. Cars carry us everywhere, making it easy to miss the physical activity necessary to burn these calories. Many of you who are my age (fifty-nine) can recall walking to school as a child. Of course, that’s not the case today. And before the advent of television, kids went outdoors to play baseball, football, tag, and to exhaust themselves on the public playground. Now, our kids mostly play video games, watch TV, and are chauffeured everywhere by parents and school buses.
Adults are in a similar bind. Work is more intellectual than manual, and what little leisure time we have is spent recovering from the day’s stress on the couch, usually with an ample supply of calorie-packed snack foods. Is it any wonder we are in such poor shape?
Health officials first announced that we had a problem back in the early 1980s. Reacting to the threat of rising rates of obesity, heart disease, and other weight related conditions, people began jogging, running, biking, swimming, jumping rope, and doing step aerobics. All sorts of hamster wheel exercise devices were invented. People joined gyms, pumped weights, and became martial artists, rock climbers, kayakers, marathoners, jazz dancers anything to burn fat and build muscle. America was in the grip of a fitness and dieting craze that turned people into fanatics and left them feeling hungry and exhausted. Hundreds of thousands of people today are still running themselves ragged in the pursuit of losing weight.
At any given moment like right now 50 percent of all adults in this country are involved in some type of effort to lose weight. Some are dieting (formally known as calorie restriction, a fancy way of saying “eating less food”). Some are exercising their buns off. Some have joined national weight loss organizations. Some drink exotic beverages or pop pills and supplements that speed up their metabolism, or munch low calorie energy bars in place of regular meals.
This, of course, makes the diet industry a huge industry. By 2008, it will be worth $61 billion. Why so big? Because there is a lot of repeat business in the weight loss industry. People hop from fad to fad because so few of these approaches succeed. Research from as far back as the 1950s has found
that about 95 percent of all diets fail.
While the official failure rate for dieting may not surprise you, this will: Over the past few decades, the American public has been part of a massive experiment. Doctors and selfproclaimed weight loss experts have been plying us with weight loss theories that have no real scientific backing. That includes the two most popular crazes of recent times, the low fat diet and the low carb diet. Each deserves close scrutiny because millions of people in this country were (and still are) devotees.
How do we get out of this sedentary lifestyle?
Limit the time for yourself, your children at ANY entertainment device which requires no physical movement.
Plan simple activities within your neighborhood which require that you get off your butt and move i.e.: Walk to the store instead of drive. Walk around your neighborhood after dinner. Get a un-powered lawnmower cut the grass!
Get a hobby which requires physical movement. I.e.: building something in the yard. Sports with friends at a given time. Activities every weekend.
Join a local community center group, church group, sports club, car club, dance club, etc. Give yourself a reason to go out, and if it has a specific time each day, or week all the better.
Be innovative, once you get going again, you will realize just how much that you have been missing!
It’s up to you to get moving, and remember you will also be setting an example for those around you including your children!
See Also
Return from Sedentary Lifestyle to homepage
Related Posts:
- Fitness Programs for Kids
- Weight loss for children
- Overweight Kid
- Fast Food and Childhood Obesity
- Facts about Obesity
- 3 Proven Ways To Prevent Your Children From Obesity
- Adolescent Obesity
- Top 3 healthy habits your children should get into to prevent obesity
- Obesity in Adolescents
- Calories
- Diabetes and Weight Loss
- The 24 Hour Fitness Path
- Dancing for slimming
- 10 Ways to Exercise When You Don’t Feel Like Exercising
- Why is it important to lose weight?
- American Health and Fitness
- Adolescent Nutrition – Encyclopedia of Diet
- 3 important healthy eating habits to prevent your child from obesity
- Preventing Childhood Obesity
- The 10 Common Dieting Mistakes
