NOVEMBER 19, 2008

Opposed To Exercise

I was reading an publication from EPM Communications on consumer behavior and attitudes when I saw a statistic that made me unsure as to whether I should laugh out loud or cry. Here it is: A third of Americans (34%) exercise 100 or more days a year; 10% exercise 50-99 days a year; and 15% are opposed to regular exercise.

Opposed to regular exercise? What?! Why would someone say that they are opposed to regular exercise? Do these people choose to ignore the fact that as much as 64% of the U.S. population is overweight? Being overweight has been identified as a cause of cancer, diabetes, heart problems, and sleep apnea, and has been found to reduce life expectancy. Why would someone identify themselves as being against exercising?

Maybe it’s because we hear so many conflicting headlines about just how bad it is to carry extra weight on our frames. One week we hear that it’s not as bad as we previously had thought… the next week we hear that a little extra weight may be good for our bone density numbers… a week later we hear that we should lose the weight in order to stay healthy and live long lives.

As a result, it seems that we are increasingly choosing to believe exactly what we want to believe and, therefore, dangerously ignoring the rest of the facts. Does hearing these vastly different perspectives on a daily basis provide exactly the excuse we need to be lazy? We like to believe that we have good genes, that we were athletes in high school and can get back into shape whenever we want.  We also believe that we are healthy because, even though the scale is showing us a number higher than we want to see, our blood pressure and cholesterol numbers are normal. As a society, we complain about health insurance costs but isn’t it our lack of self-control and/or denial contributing to the problem?

Perhaps we should all make the time to filter through the saturation of headlines and conflicting studies and educate ourselves on the risks associated with our unhealthy habits - individually, as well as for our nation as a whole. How’s that for a New Year’s resolution?