Baby steps for Nordic Track-hating bread eaters …

When I read the following “want ad” that was reported on the “Tonight Show,” I thought it was a humorous but accurate reflection of the American opinion of physical exercise:

“Nordic Track, never used. Will trade for bread maker.”

Ditch the idea of exercise, eat more bread!

Americans don’t like the idea of exercise, as is represented in our epidemic of obesity, but we love inactivity and food — we love even more the combination of inactivity and food!

I think, if we’re honest, most of us know that isn’t good for our fitness and health.

So what is?

In 2018, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published the second edition of the “Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans.” Americans haven’t often been fond of any kind of recommendations from government that impacts how they live (especially now, coming out of a pandemic!), but the truth is the recommendations are widely endorsed by medical and fitness professionals because they are, at least, fairly accurate.

The guidelines don’t simply tell Americans to get up and start exercising. Instead, they encourage us to increase our physical activity, and then say a certain minimum level of exercise is even more beneficial. The guidelines are trying to motivate Americans who love their sedentary lifestyles to move a little more, then to increase that by adding some activity to our daily lives, and finally improving on that to exercising regularly.

It’s baby steps for those Nordic Track-hating bread eaters!

The idea is to move Americans with sedentary lifestyles (that’s most of us) from the far left of the graphic below, further along to the right:

So what are those recommendations in the “Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans”? Instead of providing a link to the 118-page document, Let me provide you with snippets of the central guidelines.

It starts early and simple:

It becomes more progressive for kids and teens:

And then there are the guidelines for adults:

If you really would like to dive deeper into the details of all of the guidelines for physical activity, you can access a PDF of the document by clicking here.

Again, the idea isn’t to go from sedentary lifestyle to rabid gym rat in a week. Start by moving more, then add more activity to your life, and finally become committed enough about your physical fitness and health — and wise stewardship of your body — that you adopt regular (adequate) exercise as a permanent lifestyle.

If you currently are living a sedentary lifestyle, to help you begin to make changes you might want to check out my small book, “Maybe I Need to Get Fit …” You can find it here.

There guidelines are reasonable advice; if you need any help adopting them, you can email me at dr.scott@ScottFreeClinic.org.

Scotty