You read about it in the papers and hear about it on the news. Federal health agencies say it could bust the Medicare trust fund well before Social Security gets into trouble. Your doctor may have even had a few words to say about your personal contribution to it. We’re talking about the nation’s obesity epidemic, of course.

There’s a constant drumbeat telling us that Americans are over-weight and getting heavier. Inevitably, fast food, lousy vending machine offerings, and ballooning portion sizes are part of the discussion. But that’s only half of the story. An important half, no doubt – just check out the movie Super Size Me or the books Fast Food Nation or Fat Land for an enthralling and sobering look at the American diet – but there’s another side to this equation.

Physical activity – specifically, the lack thereof. Over the past 50 years, technology has made everyday living and working easier, but it’s also sapped nearly every chance we have to be physically active. Only a few decades ago, most Americans did not have automatic garage door openers, automatic dishwashers, or computers and e-mail, not to mention cars. Now most do. In a typical day, vast numbers of Americans now walk a few steps to a car, pull up to a drive-through window at a fast-food chain for breakfast, drive to work, take an elevator up to the office, sit at a workstation for eight hours, and then reverse the process – perhaps even including a drive-through dinner and pickup at a video store – to go home. Soon after, we park ourselves in front of the television for the evening, maybe following a spin on the riding lawn mower or an effortless trip to the automatic washer and dryer. All told, that’s a lot of sitting. This marked drop in activity affects our daily routines 24/7, and it adds up. As you do less – and eat more, or even just the same amount – those extra calories have nowhere to go, so they get stored as fat.

The Benefits Of Walking

Is this relationship between physical inactivity and excessive fat proven? You bet. The evidence mounts, and much of it is tied to the number of steps we take each day. Some of the most compelling work comes from Japanese researcher Dr. Yoshiro Hatano, who began studying pedometer use in the 1960s. He noted that Japanese adults who walked 10,000 steps per day had less stored fat, compared with those who walked less.

Similar relationships have been shown in the United States. One study found that women who took at least 10,000 steps per day were in the normal weight range, and weighed considerably less than women who averaged 6,000 to 10,000 steps a day; women accumulating fewer than 6,000 steps a day were heavier still.

Walking For Weight Loss

Other studies continue to confirm that inactivity is connected to ill health, anf the benefits of walking can help reverse that trend. Recent research led by Dr. Lawrence Frank at the University of Vancouver, British Columbia, found that the risk of obesity rises 6 percent with each additional hour per day spent in a car. Another study in 2003 concluded that watching two or more hours of television a day increases your risk of diabetes by more than 10 percent and of obesity by nearly 25 percent. So clearly one of the best ways to reduce your chances of severe obesity and related chronic diseases is to be physically active and reduce your sedentary time. And the humble pedometer is just the tool to help you be aware of how much you’re sitting versus stepping.

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