Tag Archives: exercise

Missed opportunities to promote physical activity for kids.

Posted on May 6, 2013 | Leave a comment

Most kids don’t get enough physical activity. No surprise that inactivity is associated with health conditions like obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes. But a lack of activity in children can lead to poor academic performance, too.

But we are missing good opportunities to provide kids with chances to be physically active at home and in school. This is the topic of my Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard today.

Schools are a perfect place to include opportunities to be active. Unfortunately, opportunities for activity, from PE to recess, are among the first cuts to be made when budgets are tight. Why isn’t promoting an active, healthy lifestyle  just as important as promoting math or reading or science?

A common argument is that parents should teach their children about a healthy lifestyle, not schools. I disagree. At some point, we (society) decided that parents shouldn’t have to teach their kids math or reading or science. I don’t know the exact rationale, but it likely had something to do with the fact that most parents don’t have the knowledge or skills to teach these essential subjects. Why should activity and, while we are at it, nutrition, be any different?

In fact, we have been experimenting with removing  physical activity and nutrition education from schools and leaving it to parents for some time now. Given the childhood (and adult) obesity epidemic, it hasn’t gone well. Maybe it is time to revisit providing quality health, activity, and nutrition education in schools.

If you want to learn more about benefits of and ways to promote physical activity for kids the Physical Guidelines for Americans is a good place to start. In particular, the Midcourse Report offers recommendations and solutions regarding physical activity in children.

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Eating healthy and saving money–it can be done! And your family should try it.

Posted on May 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

I read this interesting article in USA Today about a family who is working together to lose weight by eating healthy and exercising more. The family is participating the USA Today’s Family Fitness Challenge, which provides them with expert advice.

Predictably, their fitness is improving and they are losing weight (over 100 pounds total so far). One family member even quit smoking!

What may be surprising is that they are saving money following their new healthier diet. By preparing most meals at home they are saving about $300 per week on food!

Another happy consequence is that they are spending more time together as a family by eating meals  and exercising together. No doubt this is good support for them as they try to improve their health.

They are doing this as part of  a TV show (The Doctors) and they have an exercise physiologist and a nutritionist working with them, so it would be easy to think that a typical family without this support wouldn’t be successful. I disagree.

I think that if most families started preparing dinners at home, eating as a family, and going for a walk (or doing some other activity) together after dinner they would get in better shape, lose weight, and benefit from more time together.

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Don’t be an April Fool! Weight loss myths revealed.

Posted on April 1, 2013 | Leave a comment

Diets don’t work!

Exercise will make you gain weight!

This supplement will melt fat away while you sleep! 

Unfortunately, claims like these are not an April Fools joke. They are repeated so frequently that diets and exercise are avoided by many in favor of supplements to promote weight loss. Also unfortunately, they aren’t true. My Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week busts these common weight loss myths. Here is a bit more about each.

1. Diets don’t work! This is a common claim, usually to explain why most people who lose weight end up gaining it back. But diets do work. Almost every diet leads to weight loss in the short-term and some lead to  long-term weight loss. I have written about selecting the “best” diet and why the diet you pick isn’t the most important predictor of weight loss previously. And it is possible to lose weight and keep it off. But it is difficult, as this article explains so elegantly. Difficult, not impossible.

2. Exercise will make you gain weight! This is another popular myth about weight loss.  The good news is that exercise does work to promote weight loss. In fact, weight loss by exercise alone results in greater fat loss and preserves muscle compared to weight loss by diet. It’s true. But you probably shouldn’t try to lose weight by exercise alone. The best results will come from combining diet and exercise.

3. Melt fat away while you sleep by taking supplement X! This sounds great, which explains why Americans spend billions of dollars on dietary supplements each year. Unfortunately, most of these supplements have not been researched either adequately or at all to determine their effectiveness or safety, or they have been shown to be ineffective, as shown here. A conservative conclusion is that there are no supplements that have been shown to safely promote long-term weight loss.

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Too much of a good thing–can you do too much exercise?

Posted on February 19, 2013 | Leave a comment

Given that most people aren’t active enough, the message “move more” seems like a good one. But it is possible to do too much. my Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week discusses the potential hazards of doing too much exercise as well as how to avoid this situation.

For most people, the biggest risk for doing too much comes when they begin an exercise program. Progressing too quickly to longer time and/or higher intensity exercise can lead to muscle soreness or injury. A common guideline is the 10% rule: don’t increase your time or intensity more than 10% at a time. Although increases of 10% may not always be practical—a 10% increase from a 30 minute jog is 33 minutes—the message to increase slowly is a good one. Incidentally, this New York Times article suggests that there isn’t any good evidence that following the 10% rule reduces injury risk. That said, going from a 30 minute run to 60 minutes is too much, too soon.

One way to get guidance on how to progress in an exercise program is to consult a fitness professional, like a personal trainer. Sadly, many people get injured, or at least have a bad exercise experience, because of an overly ambitious personal trainer. Make sure you find someone who has experience with novice exercisers to help reduce this risk.

Despite the potential hazards of doing too much exercise, most people should worry about not doing enough. So, get moving!

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Exercise and breast cancer

Posted on October 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

Healthy lifestyle habits are important for reducing a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer. One of these is regular physical activity, which can reduce the risk of breast cancer and prevent recurrence in women who have had breast cancer. You can read more about this in my Health & Fitness Column in the Aiken Standard this week.

You can learn more about breast cancer including statistics, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment from the National Cancer Institute here.

If you are interested in the research, this study demonstrates the effect of physical activity and maintaining a health body weight on reducing breast cancer risk.

 

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