Why don’t people exercise, even a little?

Inactivity increasing

So it was disheartening, and even a little shocking, to read that a new survey found that more than 80 million Americans aged 6 years and older—28% of the population—reported that they engaged in no physical activity at all in 2014. Zero. Not one of a list of over 100 activities.5 6 No walking or playing catch or mowing the lawn or raking the leaves. No gardening or swimming or kicking a football around. The number of these so called “inactives” has grown each year since the annual surveys began in 2007.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 26.3% of US adults engaged in no leisure-time activity in 2013. Respondents were classified as participating in no leisure-time physical activity if they responded “no” to the question, “During the past month, other than your regular job, did you participate in any physical activities or exercises such as running, calisthenics, golf, gardening, or walking for exercise?” CDC also found that less than half of Americans meet the standard of 150 minutes a week of physical activity that was set in 2008.7 8

I understand that some people hate jogging and going to the gym. So do I. Thirty minutes of exercise a day, five days a week, is a pretty high bar for people who don’t like it very much. But how is it that somewhere between 25% and 30% of Americans get absolutely no exercise in a year? I know that today’s society and jobs are conducive to a sedentary lifestyle. Indeed, modern life for many requires it. Previously, many jobs and even housework required at least walking around, if not outright exercise. Now we spend all our time looking at screens of various sizes or behind the wheel of a car. Schools used to encourage, even mandate, physical activity. Now it is hard to find a school that does so, having eliminated or made optional what we used to call physical education. We are paying a high price for our modern habits and convenience.

Needed: strategies

What can we do about this? Some people like to go to gyms and work out and jog or run. Terrific, more power to them. Keep it up. But the rest of us need a strategy or a series of strategies from which we can choose.

These might include shortening the time for exercise by trying a high intensity interval training technique.9 This gets you out of breath fast but is over mercifully quickly, in a matter of a few minutes. Having low tech equipment such as elastic bands and benches readily available is another way to encourage brief intervals of physical activity. The automated commute can be countered by integrating walking into it: parking at the far end of the car park or getting off the bus or train a stop or two before your destination. At the very least people can stand up several times a day and walk around the office (or the block). Or try micro-bursts of exercise; one friend never walks short distances, breaking into a jog to go around the corner or catch a bus. Annoying but perhaps effective.

Some people are motivated by measurement. Virtually everyone is carrying a smartphone these days, many of which are equipped to measure physical activity. Pedometers are dirt cheap and easy to use. Noting that you’ve walked only 2500 steps by dinner time is a nice motivator for an after dinner stroll.

Clearly, motivation is the key, and doctors have a role in this too. The lesson of the brief smoking cessation intervention should not be lost on exercise: if the single most important thing a smoker can do for his or her health is to stop smoking, then the single most important thing a non-smoker can do may well be to figure out an exercise strategy. I know that experts have failed to find evidence that brief counseling by a physician to encourage exercise is effective,10 but common sense and public health urgency demand that we do something. Action is appropriate while we wait for better research to tell us what works best.

I’ve been writing this for too long. Must get up and walk around.