At first read, the news from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sounds none-to-good for the Old North State: “Americans who live in parts of Appalachia and the South are the least likely to be physically active in their leisure time … .” Read on, though, and you discover that Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee are the prime offenders. “In those states, physical inactivity rates are 29.2 percent or greater for more than 70 percent of the counties.” By “physical inactivity” they mean these people get no exercise outside of their regular jobs (which could be sedentary as well). The national average, as of 2008, was 25.4 percent, meaning a quarter of Americans get no leisure exercise
Category Archives: Fitness
How often is she working out?
Wondering where you fit in the How-often-is everyone-else-working-out? scheme of things?
Even if you don’t think of yourself as competitive, the thought probably does cross your mind. Especially if you’ve only recently embarked on an exercise program and it seems like other newcomers you know are losing more weight, keeping up better in Pilates, suddenly shopping the petite section. Are they working out three times a week? Four? Three times a day seven days a week!?
Pedal while you work
We’ll avoid the obvious suggestion of workers powering office equipment when we report a study at East Carolina University that found sedentary office workers like the idea of having a portable pedaling machine under their desk. Like it, and will use it, in the case of 18 workers who had such a device placed under their desks for a four-week period.
Weigh in on weighty issues
Sometimes when I’m at the gym, I look at the woman next to me on the bike, the guy across the way doing bench press, the class behind glass doing Power Yogalates (something like that) and I wonder, “Why are they here? What’s motivating them?”
Maybe that’s because I’m not entirely sure why I’m there. Yeah, it makes be feel good (afterward). Yeah, working out helps make it possible for me to backpack and mountain bike and paddle and a lot of the other things I like to do. And yeah, I know that staying in shape now will help ensure that I can continue to lead an active life later in life. For me, it’s an amalgam of reasons rather than one specific thing.
When the going gets tough, keep going
The following is a expanded version, with links, of a story I wrote that originally appeared in yesterday’s (Feb. 1) The News & Observer and Charlotte Observer.
You’re a month into your new fitness program and you’re not seeing the results you expected: You are not alone.