26-46 Get Well
In the end, they say, your health is all you have. If that's true, too many people are still squandering their most precious resources. Still, it's not too late to change. Whether it's eating better food, getting enough sleep, or finally tossing the smokes, you can feel better (and maybe even live longer).
26. Exercise, a little
For more than 25 years, Joanne Ikeda, a nutrition education specialist at the University of California-Berkeley, had been telling clients to exercise. But the truth is, she didn't follow her own advice.
"I used to take Jazzercise, but I was such a klutz," she says. She tried exercise classes at night. "I was too exhausted." Her husband went to the gym every morning, but she couldn't make herself go with him. Then, about seven years ago, she made a decision: "I started walking every morning with my dog."
Up and down the hills of her California neighborhood she went, 20 minutes at first, then 30 minutes, at a moderate pace, then a little faster. "In the first year, my dog lost 7 pounds, and I lost nothing," she says. But Ikeda, 60, wasn't trying to lose weight. "I'm overweight, just like most of us," she says. "But the thing is, I've maintained my weight over all these years since I started walking."
Silver bullet. The benefits that come from daily exercise read like the U.S. surgeon general's wish list: It reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, Type II diabetes, breast and colon cancer, osteoporosis, and overall mortality; lowers blood pressure and blood sugar levels; reduces body fat, builds lean muscle, and prevents weight gain; increases good HDL cholesterol and reduces the harmful LDL; enhances self-esteem; alleviates depression and anxiety; and slows cognitive decline and disability among older adults. Exercise can even improve sex--in one study, a group of sedentary men who began exercising an hour three or four times a week found that they experienced more frequent sexual activity, better orgasms, and greater satisfaction.
But the fact is a majority of Americans do not relish the wonders of exercise. So what's the very minimum amount of exercise that will keep the gym-averse healthy? The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that adults accumulate a mere 30 minutes of exercise per day, on most or preferably all days. This is a level that can reduce cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other serious chronic illnesses. To lose weight or maintain a large weight loss, it takes more: The Institute of Medicine recommends accumulating 60 minutes of activity each day to achieve a healthy weight. "The key word here is accumulate, " says Marcia Stefanick, professor of medicine at Stanford University. "You don't have to do all 30 minutes--or 60--at once. You can do three 10-minute bouts."
Indeed, she says, the whole notion of exercise is undergoing a "paradigm shift." For decades, exercise has been synonymous with aerobics classes, Spandex, and pumping iron. And that's not the way it has to be. "I'm not opposed to going to the gym," says Steven Blair, a fitness expert and president and CEO of the Cooper Institute in Dallas. "But we've been pushing that idea for 20 years and we have something like 15 percent of the population doing it."
advertisement
