A Sedentary Lifestyle Compounds Obesity Woes

If you’re wondering what a sedentary lifestyle is, it’s simply a fancy term for sitting down and doing nothing.

You’re leading a sedentary lifestyle if you’re being a couch potato or remaining inactive most of the time with little or no exercise.

A new study featured in Clinical Cardiology showed that morbidly obese individuals (those with body mass indexes between 40 and 49.9) were sedentary for more than 99 percent of the day. They also walked less than 2,500 steps daily, way below the recommended 10,000 steps for healthy living.

A precise body sensor was attached to the participants and was used to measure physical activity, caloric expenditure and minute-by-minute movement over a 72-hour period within their homes.

After the data was collected, a structured cardiorespiratory fitness testing was performed on each subject and most of the morbidly obese participants in the study were markedly sedentary. They spend 23 hours and 51.6 minutes on average per day sleeping or engaged in sedentary activity and the remaining 8.4 minutes were spent in moderate activity.

These findings aren’t really surprising. For the longest time, Americans have been eating much of the same stuff everyday – processed foods and fast foods – but have been doing very little exercise to burn those unwanted calories.

Modern living has contributed to sedentary lifestyle obesity. The satellite TV and remote control, the car wash, the dishwasher, Internet, etc rob you of the time you could have spent on physical activity and contribute to your risk of obesity.

For the record, obesity has been linked to five of the top 10 diseases with the highest mortality rates:

• cardiovascular disease
• stroke
• diabetes
• hypertension, and
• cancer

You don’t necessarily need to join a gym or engage in vigorous physical activity to start burning some calories. You can start by doing non-exercise activities like folding laundry, washing the dishes, mowing the lawn or taking the stairs instead of the elevator.

Light amounts of physical activity and exercise may yield significant health benefits. Over time, as you increase your amounts of light physical activity, you will also increase your aerobic capacity and ultimately, reduce mortality.

Whichever way you look at it, there’s no reason not to move around, sweat it out and exercise. Your body is designed for movement. Unlike a car, the more you move, the healthier your body gets.

When you move your muscles, ligaments and limbs, you’re actually massaging your tissues and organs, bringing them oxygen and nutrients and enhancing their flexibility. You also move lymph fluid around your body (you can’t pump your lymph fluid if you don’t move).

Exercise also makes you sweat and flush out the toxins in your body and encourages you to replace the lost fluid by drinking pure water. Outdoor physical activities also provide you with the benefits of sunlight and vitamin D, a very important nutrient which most Americans are deficient in.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to the obesity epidemic but you always have a choice. Don’t be a victim of the sedentary lifestyle disease. It’s not too late to take control of your health.

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Tags: exercise, obesity, sedentary lifestyle, sedentary lifestyle obesity