Are you constantly dieting in an attempt to lose weight? If you are going to be effective in taking the weight off, and then keeping it off long term – then including exercise and physical fitness is as important than eating less calories in your diet.
And if your ultimate objective is attaining a nutritional health and fitness lifestyle, then a program than includes aerobic and resistance exercise is necessary.
But as reported by the US Census Bureau: Americans spend around 10 hours every day in non-physical activities like watching television, using a computer, or driving.
When you add the amount of time spent eating and sleeping, a problem has been created the is a big threat to one’s health and well-being – and of course, the more you sit and do nothing the more you eat.
A study in the ‘Archives of Internal Medicine’ has even linked sitting to increasing the risk of mortality – Read more
This problem has led Michael Joyner, MD, who is a physiologist at Mayo Clinic to state that this large deficiency in physical activity should be dealt with similarly to any medical condition, including having doctors to actually write a physical fitness program prescription as a remedy to the problem.
Dr. Joyner has written in the ‘Journal of Physiology’:
“I would argue that physical inactivity is the root cause of many of the common problems that we have. If we were to medicalize it, we could then develop a way, just like we’ve done for addiction, cigarettes and other things, to give people treatments, and lifelong treatments, that focus on behavioral modifications and physical activity. And then we can take public health measures, like we did for smoking, drunken driving and other things, to limit physical inactivity and promote physical activity.”
It was further stated how physical inactivity becomes a chronic condition that can serious affect people without weight problems – this is not just a problem that leads to continued weight gain. And as a result, doing nothing physical becomes an ingrained habit that becomes very hard to break, and the longer it lasts the more symptoms like being dizzy, tired, and having aches and pains make it even harder to get into an exercise program.
And again, this is why it is being recommended for doctors to prescribe a lifestyle approach and program for becoming more physical fit.
Start A Physical Fitness And Exercise Program
Physical fitness and exercise isn’t for ‘jocks’, and it isn’t for someone who is looking to lose some weight – it is part of a lifestyle that can help ensure that you will continue to have the best possible health and enjoyment of life.
If you need guidance for getting started on a fitness program, I would suggest that you look at Fit Over 40.
I ran across this, because I have been particularly interested in resources for nutritional health and fitness as you get older.
I just turned 60, and even though I am in as good of shape as I have been in the last 30 years, I am still very interested in learning more from the experts – and I think that the authors, Jon Benson and Tom Veneuto, are fitness and health experts.
I especially liked the format, which includes the profiles of over 50 different real fitness ‘role’ models, discussing what they have done to be able to attain a fitness and health lifestyle.
About Barry Lutz
