Physical Activity Report Card: Are We Moving Enough for Health?

Jim Hill:

Welcome to Weight Loss And, where we delve into the world of weight loss. I'm Jim Hill.

Holly Wyatt:

And I'm Holly Wyatt. We're both dedicated to helping you lose weight, keep it off, and live your best life while you're doing it.

Jim Hill:

Indeed, we now realize successful weight loss combines the science and art of medicine, knowing what to do and why you will do it.

Holly Wyatt:

Yes, the “And” allows us to talk about all the other stuff that makes your journey so much bigger, better, and exciting.

Jim Hill:

Ready for the “And” factor?

Holly Wyatt:

Let's dive in.

Jim Hill:

Here we go.

Jim Hill:

Holly, you might remember that we recently had an episode on our nutrition report card. We thought maybe we should do the same thing for physical activity.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, I know. I think that would be fun. So we're going to talk a lot about physical activity today, but I think it's important for the listeners to know that we're not going to be just talking about workouts. We're going to look specifically at how daily movement has quietly disappeared. It's not just going to be about what you're doing in terms of planned activity, but how is kind of the movement that we used to have in our lives just disappeared over the past few decades? And more importantly, really, what is it costing us?

Jim Hill:

Yeah, we've all heard the advice to move more. But what if I told you that in the 1960s, people were burning 300 to 400 more calories a day without ever setting foot in a gym.

Holly Wyatt:

I mean, Jim, that's huge. 300 to 400 calories a day. That is a workout. That's what most people burn when they go to the gym for an hour even. So, I mean, that's a huge impact. So, I think this is really an important episode because we know, we talk about all the time how important physical activity is in terms of success and managing your weight. And we're always talking about how can you incorporate it. So I think this is going to be a great episode because we can look at the physical activity guidelines and we can really see, are people meeting them?

Jim Hill:

I think it is an important episode and hopefully you're going to learn why it's so hard to feel like you are active today and maybe what you can do about it. So let's start with, physical activity guidelines. Every few years, the U.S. Government issues guidelines for fiscal activity. Now, they do this for nutrition. We've talked about this before. They do it every five years. They issue dietary guidelines for Americans. The first physical activity guidelines for Americans were issued in 2008, and there was one update in 2018. Okay, so the most recent ones are 2018. And here's what they say, Holly. They say Americans should get 150 to 300 minutes a week of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 minutes per week of vigorous physical activity. And additionally, they recommend that you engage in strength training or resistant exercise two or more days per week. That's what they're recommending to Americans.

Holly Wyatt:

And let's be clear, recommending for what goal, for what outcome?

Jim Hill:

For health. They're saying to maximize health. And we can talk about this because it's not, it may be a little different for people that are trying to keep weight off but this is for the general public. They're saying if you're active this much, it's going to promote your health. Now, moderate intensity exercise, it's exercises that get your heart rate up a little bit, 50 to 60%. So make sure your heart beat a little faster. It's a little challenging, but it's not to the point where you can't carry on a conversation. Vigorous physical activity is sometimes called high-intensity exercise. Really get your heart rate up high. You can't do this for very long. Activities like cycling very hard or running fast, running a marathon, something that's a little bit more than activity. That's what they're telling Americans to do. How many people do you think meet these guidelines?

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, I'm guessing not very many.

Jim Hill:

About a quarter of the population. So it means that three quarters of us don't meet these guidelines.

Holly Wyatt:

Well, that's better than we were doing with nutrition, if you remember.

Jim Hill:

It is a little bit better. But the other thing, and we'll get back to this in a second, think about how they determine who meets the guidelines. Do you know how they figure out how many people are meeting the guidelines?

Holly Wyatt:

I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's some self-report, and then I don't know if they get any actual measurements.

Jim Hill:

Most of it is from self-report. So the 25% comes from self-report. You're basically asking people how many days for how long they're active or keeping physical activity diaries. But one monitoring system, NHANES, we've talked about it in Haines before, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. They actually do some in-person measurements. So they put accelerometers on people, a subset of people. And how many people do you think met guidelines when they actually measured it?

Holly Wyatt:

I'm guessing that went down.

Jim Hill:

Six to eight percent.

Holly Wyatt:

Now we're getting closer to the who is getting a good grade on their diet. Now we're about equal with what we talked about in the last episode.

Jim Hill:

This is, we've said over and over and over, you have to be very careful with self-reports. When you ask people what they eat and how much they move, it's not that they're lying, Holly. It's just they don't recall that. It's not easy to do that. And that's why in this field, we need objective measurements. Now, the other thing that we're going to go back to self-reports and self-reports, another quarter of the population report no physical activity, zero, nothing. So you get, at least from self-reports, a quarter that meet the guidelines, a quarter that do nothing, and that leaves 50%.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. So we got two ends, but what's people in the middle? What about that 50%?

Jim Hill:

So people in the middle would be people who aren't totally sedentary, but they don't meet these guidelines. Now, Holly, 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity physical activity is not a very high bar. Think about that. That's pretty minimal.

Holly Wyatt:

Well, let's see. Let's divide it down. Divide that by six. Let's say, six days a week when you give yourself a rest day. That's only about 20 to 30 minutes a day?

Jim Hill:

About 30 minutes a day, five days a week. So that's what they're recommending. 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week. And you're asking people to do 30 minutes, five times a week. And 75% or more of the population doesn't do that.

Holly Wyatt:

Well, really less, right? When you measure it, even less. Yeah.

Jim Hill:

Really less, when you measure, it's very few. I know you're a hard grader, but if you're grading us on our physical activity in the U.S., what grade would you give us?

Holly Wyatt:

Well, I think I'd give us a D. I mean, I'm close to an F, but I might just go with a D just because there's a few people out there doing it, maybe.

Jim Hill:

Yeah. So I think I would agree with you. I think that it's really, really terrible that we're so sedentary. And you and I've talked about this before. If you're sedentary, it means your energy expenditure is very low. You're almost at a resting energy state during the day, which means you can't eat very many calories to avoid gaining weight. It is almost impossible for a sedentary population to maintain low rates of obesity. And interesting, Holly, as physical activity has gone down over the years, guess what's gone up?

Holly Wyatt:

Obesity.

Jim Hill:

Exactly.

Holly Wyatt:

You're trying to trick me there. Hey, I want to stop for one minute because I know we've been getting some questions from the listeners and this idea of like high energy and low energy, I'm not sure they quite grasp it. So maybe let's make sure, what do you mean when you say high energy or low energy? You're saying that with no physical activity, you're at a very low energy through your body.

Jim Hill:

So your body needs calories. I'm thinking of your body as a car engine. You put in fuel, and the engine uses that fuel for outputs. What's your output in the body? It's to run all your body functions, your hormones, your heart beating, all your organs functioning. It takes energy to do that, right? So there's a basal state where if you're just at rest, your body requires so much energy, right? Now, when you ramp up physical activity, the energy required goes up and up and up. If you get no physical activity, your engine, it's like your engine's idling all the time. It doesn't need very much fuel, which means you can't eat very much. There are two ways to increase your metabolism or your energy expenditure. One is to be more physically active. What's the other one, Holly?

Holly Wyatt:

To gain weight.

Jim Hill:

Exactly. The more body mass you have, in other words, the more you weigh, the more energy your body needs. So if you get no physical activity, this resting state, it's hard to not eat more than you need. Then you gain weight. As you gain weight, your body actually needs more. So it's this ratchet effect. And we know from lots of research, people that are overweight and obese require more energy to maintain their weight, not less. And they require more, not because they're being physically active, because they have a larger body that they have to have function.

Holly Wyatt:

And I think the key is, I think sometimes when we use the term low energy or high energy, it gets confusing. But low energy just simply means you're maintaining your body at a low amount of calories in, meaning you're eating them, and a low amount of calories that you're burning, or what we like to sometimes say expending, or out. And you can do that, right? You could potentially not move very much and probably eat 1,500 calories and burn 1,500 calories. Or you could move a lot, be the same body size, but move that body more and eat 2,500 calories and burn 2,500 calories. And I would consider that a high energy level.

Jim Hill:

Yeah. So theoretically, someone could take in 1,500 calories and burn 1,500 calories and they're just fine. They're going to regulate their weight. Somebody else could take in 3,000 and burn 3,000. And so on one hand, you say, it doesn't matter. The problem is our bodies, our physiology was developed to facilitate food intake. So maintaining an intake of 1,500 calories is hard. Maintaining an intake of 3,000 calories is far easier.

Holly Wyatt:

Far easier. And I don't think it was, like you're saying, it wasn't how our body was meant to function. I think it was meant to function with more energy going through the system. And sometimes we use the word flux, and that's very confusing, but more energy coming in and going out consistently, basically.

Jim Hill:

For most of mankind's history, we had to be physically active. It wasn't that we had a choice, right? We had to get food and shelter and transportation. And we'll talk in a minute about maybe how that's changed. But sort of our physiology developed in this environment where you had to expend a lot of energy. So the goal was eating a lot. And so most of our history, our goal was to avoid starving to death. So our physiology said, eat, eat, eat. Well, fast forward to an environment where you don't burn a lot of calories. Now our physiology still says, eat, eat, eat.

Holly Wyatt:

Let's bring it back to what this physical activity report card is showing us. You just said 300 to 400 calories has kind of, in terms of expenditure, movement has been removed from our diets.

Jim Hill:

Taken away.

Holly Wyatt:

And we didn't even know it.

Jim Hill:

Way more than to explain all the obesity that's occurred.

Holly Wyatt:

Right.

Jim Hill:

Let's take a snapshot back in time. Let's go back to the 1960s. I remember the 1960s very well. A lot of people, Holly, met the physical activity guidelines, and yet they did not do a lot of leisure time physical activity.

Holly Wyatt:

Right. It was just in their day, just to get through their day?

Jim Hill:

So over half of the jobs required you to be physically active. So there was half the population, you know, we didn't have guidelines then, but going back and estimating, probably about half the population met the physical activity guidelines just by going to work.

Holly Wyatt:

Right. So they didn't have a choice. I mean, I guess you have a choice to go to work, but if you were going to go to work, you did it.

Jim Hill:

You got to work and to do your job, you got to be active.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah. You didn't have to think about it.

Jim Hill:

Unbelievable, Holly, but we didn't have personal computers in 1960. We didn't have Netflix. We didn't have the internet. We had to do manual labor in jobs.

Holly Wyatt:

And we didn't have all the remote controls, I bet.

Jim Hill:

That's right.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah.

Jim Hill:

Lots of occupational physical activity. Now, if you look at how many jobs require you to be physically active, how many people are meeting guidelines just by going to work today, what do you think? Estimate.

Holly Wyatt:

I'm going to say, and I don't know this, I'm totally guessing, 15%.

Jim Hill:

Maybe about 10% is a good estimate. Because think about it. Most jobs involve what you and I do, sitting in front of a screen, right?

Holly Wyatt:

Right.

Jim Hill:

40% of the population that was meeting the guidelines from work aren't doing it anymore. The other thing is transportation. Think about how transportation has changed a lot. You know, cars, etc. The estimate is in 1960, maybe a third of commutes to work involved cycling or walking. Today, it's probably less than 10% of that. So again, if you just look at the changes in work-related activity and transportation activity, it's huge. The other thing, by the way, is housework. The energy expended on housework has gone down over time.

Holly Wyatt:

I believe that I have one of those little...

Jim Hill:

You put your vacuum cleaner in there that operates.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, I have one of those.

Jim Hill:

So if you think about how physical activity has really changed, it's we don't require it to get through life anymore.

Holly Wyatt:

Exactly.

Jim Hill:

So the question is, where do you get it? Well, let's go back to this term, leisure time physical activity. So the idea is if you're not getting it at work, you're not getting it at home doing housework, you're not doing it in transportation, the idea is be active during your leisure time. And Holly, we have more leisure time than ever before because of technology. And we're expending it being physically active, right?

Holly Wyatt:

No, I don't think so, Jim. We've got a lot. We still do a lot, right? We say we don't have a lot of time. You're right. We have more leisure time, but we still don't choose to be active in that leisure time.

Jim Hill:

What do we do in our leisure time?

Holly Wyatt:

We drive our kids around. We do things that we want to do, but we're pretty sedentary when we do them.

Jim Hill:

You have, what, 300 channels on television?

Holly Wyatt:

Exactly.

Jim Hill:

When I grew up, we had three. And two of them didn't come in that good. You have the internet. You have your smartphone. You can sit, and people do this for hours, just scrolling on your smartphone. So we have all this leisure time, but we're not using it in physical activity. And in fact, Holly, probably we're more active in our leisure time now than we were in the 1960s. But we didn't need to do it in the 1960s. So if you got physical activity at work during the day, you didn't come home and feel the need to go to the gym. So we've switched in how we need to get our physical activity.

Holly Wyatt:

That makes sense. And it makes sense now why we really have to concentrate on more planned activity, because it's not going to just be put into our lives without knowing it. Right. It's going to be something you're going to have to think about and kind of re-put back in your life purposefully.

Jim Hill:

So there are a couple of things. What I want to do now in the last part of this is let's focus a little bit on what people can do. And so from one point of view, you could say, what could we do to re-engineer physical activity back in our lives? Could you make it that you need more fiscal activity in your work? That one's going to be tough. Could you put it back into transportation or housework? I think that genie's out of the bottle. I'm not sure we can put that back. I'm not sure that we're going to overcome technology. The question is, can we increase our physical activity despite all these wonderful things in technology that have helped make our lives better but have engineered physical activity out of our lives?

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah. Can we be strategic about it? I do think there are places at work where you can be more active if you're specific about it. I mean, I do think the walking desks and some of the things that people use can get a little bit more, for sure, decreased sedentary behavior, which I know is a little bit different, but can get you moving a little bit more. But I do think we're going to have to be strategic, and it's probably going to come more to planned activity than just it being part of your job. Because you're right. There aren't that many jobs now that require it.

Jim Hill:

So if you look at, there's a large part of the population that is in the workforce or goes to school. Could we start there? Are there things we could do in the worksite? I keep saying, you know, back in the 1960s, they used to give people smoke breaks. You had time off your job, you could go and smoke a cigarette. And a lot of people have suggested that maybe we need to do activity breaks. So are there things that a worksite could do? There are worksite wellness programs. And is that something that employers should be concerned about? On one hand, they can say, I want you to work. I don't care if you're physically active or not. What do you think about that?

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, I mean, it sounds okay. It sounds good to give that opportunity. Here's a 10-minute break to move. I'm not sure how much people would really use it, Jim. That's the other thing. I'm not sure. It's one thing that they might even say they would, but would they really use it or, you know, they would take the break to do something else or just keep working even?

Jim Hill:

Yeah. And do we do things like computers go off for 15 minutes between 10 and 10-15?

Holly Wyatt:

No, I don't like that. You know me.

Jim Hill:

You're not a regulatory person.

Holly Wyatt:

No, I'm not a stick, regulatory, take it away.

Jim Hill:

You're more use the carrot rather than the stick.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah. I don't want someone taking my computer away, you know? And you can argue that not everybody needs this, that some people are getting the activity in, and why would you do that for them?

Jim Hill:

Well, that's what you find in works at wellness programs. Oftentimes, the people that are participating are the people that are already doing it. So I think the challenge is how you get the people that are perfectly happy being sedentary to take advantage of some of these things, even if you do them in a work site. I think we need some innovation here. The one thing I would say is I think we have pretty good data to say that people that are more physically active actually may perform better at work. So there might be a reason for employers to want to do this, but I think you're right. I think you still have to figure out the incentives that would get people willing to do it.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah. I don't know that I have the solution to this, but I see where you're going.

Jim Hill:

What about schools? Are you willing to be a little bit more regulatory there? What about a law that says every kid at school has to get an hour a day of physical activity?

Holly Wyatt:

Oh, Jim, a law. No, we're not going to do a law. Jeez. No, I'm not. I'm not. I think we should have, we should, I'm a little bit more, let's put in some movement, but I don't know about a law.

Jim Hill:

We have laws that kids have to know math or science or whatever. Why not? And I don't know it's a law, it's guidelines so that every school has to figure out a way to teach math. How about if every school has to figure out a way to get kids active?

Holly Wyatt:

You know why I don't like this? It's because when I was in school, we had a presidential fitness test that I had to take. It was a physical activity fitness test that I had to take every year and I failed it every year. So it has scarred me. So I don't like this at all because it was a bad experience for me.

Jim Hill:

No, wait, let's don't throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Let's think about maybe making it more fun. I think you're right. I think a lot of us grew up where PE, physical education, wasn't a fun sort of thing. You ran laps or the old coaches had to do stuff. But I think there's a new way of getting kids active that's fun. So I wouldn't toss the idea that there are things we can do to get kids active during school in a way that is fun and engaging.

Holly Wyatt:

All right, Jim, I want to hear it. If you've got some ideas, let's put them out there.

Jim Hill:

I think there are innovative PE teachers. We did a program, if you remember, in Colorado where we went into schools and went school system, a PE teacher, to do it, and the kids loved the idea. So I think we've got to convince the higher-ups it's important, but I think we have really lots of very innovative teachers who could take in interesting programs into the schools.

Jim Hill:

So let's leave it as a possibility, okay?

Holly Wyatt:

All right.

Jim Hill:

So what else can people do? How can we increase leisure time, physical activity? How would you approach it?

Holly Wyatt:

Well, leisure time to me is where you have to start to find things that are active that you like, that are enjoyable. That's to me the important piece. You know, it's not that I have to go out and run three miles, but I want to go out and run because I'm training for a race and I'm going for this race with my friends and we're going to be going, you know, on a trip to Disneyland to do this race. And so it's really all kind of hooked together. That for me has really been the key is making movement part of my leisure time and making it part of what's fun in my life, what I want to do with my life.

Jim Hill:

Oftentimes when we talk about leisure time activity, we sort of look at categories. One is planned activity. This is, you know, you're intentionally setting aside time to be active. That can be a bike ride. It can be a walk. It can be a going to the gym. It can be a dance class, whatever. Then we talk about lifestyle physical activity, just the movement incorporated in life. And the third one we talk about is sitting time. Let's talk about those three. How do you approach planned activity with the people that you work with?

Holly Wyatt:

Well, just kind of what I said, the planned is, okay, what do you want to, let's make some movement into your planned day. You're actually going to schedule it. You're going to think about it, but we're going to hook it to something that is enjoyable for you, that you want to do. So it doesn't become something you have to do. It becomes something you get to do. So I do think you need to plan it in because we don't get it during our day in terms of working, most of us, or just our normal activities. So really being specific with some planned minutes of activity.

Jim Hill:

So how do you counter the people that say, "Holly, I hate physical activity. I don't like to sweat. I hate gyms. I go in there. I'm so bored. I don't like to run. What do I do?"

Holly Wyatt:

I try to say, "okay, what do you like to do? And what brings you joy? What brings meaning to your life? And we start to try to feel how we can hook moving into whatever that is. If I like to be out in nature, if I like to be around people, if I love to rescue dogs. There's so many ways you can start to increase physical activity and hook it to something that really is important to them. That's how I would go in with that.

Jim Hill:

And it has to be something you like. If we don't like it, we're not going to stay with it. And you see, we've got lots of studies where you get people active and they do stuff they don't like and they never stay with it. And there's so many activities. There's so many things you can do. There are classes, there are groups, there are walks, there's gardening, there's dancing. I think we believe that for most anybody, you can find something that is enjoyable.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah. You know, one of the things that I do in some of my classes is we do scavenger hunts. I give them a list of things that they're going to go out and look for when they're walking or when they're outside. And it's funny, they don't consider that. Maybe these are people who like to play a game or who like to do that. They like to go on scavenger hunts. And suddenly they're getting all these steps in. They're becoming active and they're purposely doing it. Because they're looking for something, it doesn't seem like exercise.

Jim Hill:

I think it's important that everybody figure out how to get planned activity in their day. And we recommend trying to do this every day, trying to build in a time. It can be 15 minutes. It can be 30 minutes. It can even be 10 minutes where you intentionally go and do an activity that is a planned activity. And again, planning is a key part of it. If you get up in the morning and you don't have a plan, you're probably not going to do anything. So planning ahead, I put it in my schedule. I actually build exercise time into my daily schedule. But I don't think we can get physical activity up where it needs to be unless people can figure out a way to add some planned activity in their day. So what about lifestyle physical activity? What do we mean by that, Holly?

Holly Wyatt:

I think that's just the movement you get in without thinking about it. You don't plan it. You may be purposeful in that you take the stairs or park your car further or do an inefficient way of getting in the building, go to the opposite door. It's kind of planned like that, but it's not a block of time. It's just the movement you put in your day to get through your day.

Jim Hill:

It's trying to be more efficient in your day, right? You're walking to a meeting, you've got a little extra time, take the long way rather than the short way.

Holly Wyatt:

Well, you can say be more efficient. I would say be less efficient.

Jim Hill:

Less efficient.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, less efficient.

Jim Hill:

Sorry, less efficient. You're exactly right. Just finding a way. You arrive at a meeting five minutes early, rather than sit and wait for everybody, just walk around a little bit. One thing I like to do is listen to podcasts while I'm walking around, etc. Things talking on the phone. I know you oftentimes when you talk on the phone, you walk around. You don't have to sit still talking on the phone. It's amazing how much those little things can add during the day.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, I agree. And once you kind of get used to it, then they become more default. So it's just normal for me to stand up and walk around when I'm on the phone. Now that's just what I do. I don't even have to think about it very much. I also purposely will take a long route to get somewhere. I don't necessarily think that what's the shortest way for me to get there. I sometimes say, what's the longest way for me to actually get there?

Jim Hill:

It's a different way of thinking, isn't it? It's thinking of being more efficient. Okay, let's talk about the third one. This one that I think is really interesting. Decrease your sitting time.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, we've talked about that before. That's actually kind of even separate, right? Just sitting, we know, the amount of sitting has gone up, and that's associated with negative health outcomes. And so just decreasing sitting, even independent, I think, of the amount of minutes of physical activity you get can be helpful. But the idea is, I think, if you do decrease your sitting, will you increase your physical activity? What do you think, Jim?

Jim Hill:

Well, anything you do other than sitting is going to be positive. Even standing rather than sitting is a benefit. But I think you can combine decreasing sitting with doing other things like walking around. But yes, decreasing sitting, we see more and more as a strategy separate from increasing physical activity.

Holly Wyatt:

Right. I think you're right. If you were purposeful, I'm going to decrease sitting and increase my physical activity. But it didn't necessarily happen that way if you don't purposely do it.

Jim Hill:

That's right. But anything is more active than sitting. Maybe lying down. Don't lie down. Don't. Stop sitting and lying down. So, in 1960, it was estimated that people got around five or so hours of sitting per day. Where do you think it is today?

Holly Wyatt:

Wow. I bet it's, oh, I'm surprised it was that high back then. So I'm going to go with, I'm going to go with 10. I'm going to double it. I don't know.

Jim Hill:

It's probably around 8 to 9, but it peaked in the 2020s. The estimates were it was 10 to 13 hours a day. And I think some of the best estimates today are maybe 8 to 9. So it's probably doubled since 1960. That's a lot of hours sitting, Holly.

Holly Wyatt:

It is.

Jim Hill:

But think about it. What do we do? We sit all day in front of our computers. Most of us go home and sit all evening right in front of the TV or the computer or something. So it's maybe not surprising that we're spending so much of that time sitting because we don't have to move around to be productive or seemingly to be productive in our lives.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, we sit in our cars if you have a commute. So a lot of people have, you know, some may have a couple hours of sitting in your car. So I guess we kind of sit and we move to another place and we sit and we move to another place and we sit and that adds up.

Jim Hill:

So kind of to summarize where we are. Physical activity has almost certainly decreased. We don't have good numbers, but maybe on the order of 300 or so calories per day. And again, it's switched because we never, even in the 1960s, it wasn't like everybody was spending all their leisure time being active. It was that people are getting theirphysical time during their day. They were more active at work and more active in transportation. That has gone down. So today, to meet our guidelines, you have to sort of do it through your leisure time. And that's really presented a challenge for people because we haven't increased our leisure time physical activity nearly enough to make up for the way it's declined through occupation, transportation, et cetera. So what do we do, Holly?

Holly Wyatt:

Well, I mean, that's a big question. Lots of things we could do. I think we've talked about a lot of them. You know, one thing we haven't talked about, Jim, and we did bring it up at the beginning, so I do want to make sure we at least mention it, is that this strength training piece of it. Because that's part of the guidelines and people may not be aware of that. So, I did want us to spend a little bit of time on that.

Jim Hill:

Well, increased strength training can do a couple of things. One of the big ones, it helps maintain your muscle mass and your muscle burns calories. So if you're losing muscle, particularly as you age, Holly, you tend to lose a little muscle and strength training can help that. So it can actually help you burn calories. So it can keep your metabolism up a little bit. And the other thing it does, it allows you to function during life. And again, as you get older, lifting things, putting your suitcase in the overhead bin, etc. It's very important that you do this because as you're aging, you're fighting a losing battle against losing strength and muscle, and strength training can really help in a way that aerobic exercise doesn't. Aerobic exercise is very good, but it doesn't do some of the things that strength training does for your functionality and your metabolic rate.

Holly Wyatt:

So the guidelines, I think, say two days a week. They're recommending we do some type of strength training two days a week. Did they give us any more guidance than that, or is that just...

Jim Hill:

No, these are very general. I couldn't find any data on how many people meet that, but my guess is not very many. And I would say, I think two days a week would be great. But start out doing one day a week. Do 15 minutes. It's amazing what 15 minutes of strength training. And again, like everything, do 15 minutes. Start out slow and work yourself up. If you go out and start lifting a bunch of weights on day one and you haven't done this, you're going to feel terrible and be sore. Ramp it up. Ramp it up on aerobic. Ramp it up on strength. But try to get out at least one day a week and do at least 15 minutes.

Holly Wyatt:

I know we don't have great numbers, but my guess is that strength training has, pretty low, if not the lowest participation rates. That would be my guess.

Jim Hill:

That's my guess too.

Holly Wyatt:

So why do you think that's the case? Why is that overlooked? Why is that not something people talk about more, right? It's kind of an afterthought, and I don't think that many people are doing it.

Jim Hill:

Again, what you can see is not many people are meeting any of the recommendations. But I think the reason is there are ways to make maybe aerobic exercise a little bit more appealing. People can watch all the machines. You can watch TV in your living room while you walk on a treadmill, et cetera. And people say, “Oh my gosh, I go in here and I just lift these weights. That's very boring. It's not exciting.”

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah. I also think that people don't know where to get started. They feel like they have to go to a gym. And if you don't belong to a gym, then you don't think you can do it. Or if you do belong to a gym, that section of the gym is really intimidating. I know for a long time, I was like, “I'm not going over there in the weight section. I'll go over here in the cardio section or the class section maybe. But that side over there, I don't know what to do and I'm going be embarrassed and I don't even know how to get started.” So I think that's part of the barriers that we're seeing is just gyms and equipment and getting comfortable with what you could do.

Jim Hill:

I agree.

Holly Wyatt:

I think it's important that you don't have to use equipment. I think that's one of the messages we need to get out there.

Jim Hill:

No, you can lift stuff around your house. Find something that's five pounds or 10 pounds and just lift it. You don't have to have weights.

Holly Wyatt:

I'm going to tell you something funny because this is something we do in class and it's a piece of equipment, strength training equipment that every single person has in their home. Do you know what it is, Jim?

Jim Hill:

What?

Holly Wyatt:

A toilet. We do what we call potty squats.

Jim Hill:

I love it.

Holly Wyatt:

You can use your toilet. You can shut the lid, right? You sit down and you stand up. You sit down and you stand up. It's a squat. You know, you're basically doing a body weight squat. Do 10 of them when you're in the bathroom, you know? So we call them potty squats. And it's a piece of gym equipment that you have in your home. And it's a way that, yes, that would count. That counts as, you know, strength training.

Jim Hill:

love it. Well, I can't figure out if this episode has been depressing or optimistic, Holly.

Holly Wyatt:

Well, I think probably a little of both. Hopefully, it gets people thinking. What are you doing? Where are you? What would your personal report card be for physical activity?

Jim Hill:

One of the things maybe I'm trying to look at some optimistic outcomes here, you know, we've studied people in the National Weight Control Registry who have kept their weight off for a long period of time. And they all report that they figured out how to make physical activity an important part of their lives. Now, to be fair, they don't say, “I live to exercise.” They're not there, but they say, “I've figured out a way to incorporate it every day into my life. I can't tell you I love it, but I would miss it if it isn't there.” So I think that you can do this. You can achieve a way to put physical activity into your life that makes your life satisfying.

Holly Wyatt:

And I think it's important to say some of these people didn't feel that way when they started.

Jim Hill:

Probably most of them didn't feel that way when they started. They would never have thought they could ever get to the point of being regular exercisers.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, I think that's an important point.

Jim Hill:

All right. You want to do some listener questions?

Holly Wyatt:

I do. We have a couple good ones. So let's do a couple of this. All right. So I'm going to do this one about strength training since we just talked about that. This person talks about if they meet their kind of aerobic activity goal, if they're not doing strength training, are they still getting the most of the benefits? What do you think?

Jim Hill:

You're getting a lot of benefit. Any exercise is good because it increases your calorie burning. It helps boost your metabolism. But with avoiding the strength training, you're losing the ability to sort of preserve your muscle mass, avoid losing muscle mass, which in the long run can help. So it's way better than doing nothing. So if you meet the aerobics goal, great. What I would say is challenge yourself to add a little bit of strength training and it'll be even more beneficial.

Holly Wyatt:

I think I would say yes. I think you're getting most of the benefit. You could get a little bit more, but don't think that you're missing out on the benefit because you're not doing the strength training.

Jim Hill:

All right, Holly, here's one. I walk during lunch break. Does that count toward my 150 minutes of physical activity?

Holly Wyatt:

Absolutely, for sure. And you can break it up. I walk during my lunch break. I walk after work for 10 minutes. Do it here. Do it. All of it adds up. And there's lots of good data to show that, Jim, that you can break it up and add it up and that it does count.

Jim Hill:

Yeah, there's some good science here where people have looked at different ways of getting to the same goal of physical activity. And it's perfectly fine to do it in shorter bouts as long as it adds up to the amount you want. And I might say, too, that 150 minutes is the minimal. If you're trying to keep off weight, I think you're much more in the higher range. We really suggest that people that are keeping off a significant amount of weight shoot for an hour a day.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, that's for more body weight regulation versus health.

Jim Hill:

That's right. But if you're at a healthy weight and you're not maintaining a weight loss, 150 to 300 minutes. But don't just look at the minimum. Don't just look at 150. More is better, and you're going to get so many other benefits from increasing activity.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah. For me, I'm going for 60 to 70 minutes, six days a week. That's what I've found is kind of my sweet spot for helping me maintain my weight. And I know that's a lot more than just my health, but that's what I need to not regain the weight. All right, here's another one. How much does standing during the day matter compared to working out? This one's for you, Jim.

Jim Hill:

Again, what I like to tell people is start with just getting a number of minutes. Don't worry about what you do. Then as you get comfortable doing that, you can look at working on intensity and other kinds of things. People always ask me, what's the best exercise for me to do? And they've been completely sedentary. Just get started. I often say start with walking. And then as you get comfortable doing that, add the intensity. Intensity is, there's something about vigorous activity that I think adds to aerobic activity. But the major thing is do it. Do X number of minutes. Set your goal at being active. Don't worry about how you get there. Once you start meeting that goal routinely, you might want to think about increasing your intensity a little bit.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, but I think they were maybe getting at a little bit is just preventing the sedentary. So, just standing. Is that doing a lot or is that really not enough just to stand?

Jim Hill:

Well, standing helps, but it's probably not enough. If you replace that eight to nine hours of sitting with standing, it would help. But you still would not be at the point where you really want to boost your metabolism and your energy expenditure to a point that helps you with body weight regulation.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, I would agree with that.

Jim Hill:

I think you have to do the planned activity. The other stuff is good. But it's the planned activities that's the foundation that gives you that really boost in metabolism.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah. And I think we did an episode on this and we talked about the standing desks. And I think the idea was it might even be better to have a walking pad, not just a standing desk.

Jim Hill:

Right. Exactly.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah.

Jim Hill:

All right. You want to do some vulnerability questions?

Holly Wyatt:

Sure. I'll start. So, Jim, what's been your biggest challenge when trying to meet the strength training recommendations?

Jim Hill:

Okay. So you hit close to home here. I have no problem with the aerobic stuff. I try to get a workout in every day. The aerobic stuff's easy. The strength training, it's harder. And so what I've done in the past is I've hired a trainer. What's interesting, Holly, I know exactly what to do, but having a trainer to motivate me, for me, helped. So the trainer I had here just left, so now I'm on my own, and I do strength training one day a week, and I have a set routine that I do, and I do it, but I got to tell you, I don't look forward to those days as much as the aerobic days. So it's harder for me, but I know that I need to do it. And I've got a routine now where usually every Monday is my strength training day.

Holly Wyatt:

That's impressive, Jim. I like that. Wow.

Jim Hill:

All right, Holly. Was there ever a time where you fell into an inactive routine? And if so, what helped you break out of it?

Holly Wyatt:

Oh, all the time, especially change of seasons. When I move from one season to another, it's not uncommon. I know this is going to happen now. I try to prevent it, but it still happens. I will become inactive because my activities that I've been doing in one season maybe don't really go into the next season. And so, you know, path of least resistance is to become inactive again. So this happens to me quite a bit. And I now know what to do, though. During these changes or when I notice that my activity now is low, it's kind of like you. I have to go out and get some form of accountability. And sometimes that's a trainer or it may simply be another group of people. And I plan a trip that we're all going to do together and I need to train for a race or train for something so I can do it or I start going back to my classes and get into a kind of a challenge or a competition, something to get me going again. Once that momentum is going, I'm good. But I need something like that to get that momentum going again. And that's how I really go from when I fall back into being inactive to getting into an active lifestyle again.

Jim Hill:

Great. All right, Holly, let's look at some takeaways here. So, we've made some modest gains in leisure time activity, but we've lost so much ground in physical activity and work and transportation. And we're not likely going to go back to a time where we get our physical activity in work and transportation. So we have to look at leisure time, physical activity. And again, we broke it up into three buckets. Do some planned activity, increase your lifestyle, physical activity, and reduce your sitting time. And as a part of that, add some strength training too. I understand this is tough for people to do, but it's so important. And we do see that people that are able to do it really say that it enhances their lives. So I think it's important. If you're going to be sedentary, it's going to be very, very hard for most of you to maintain a weight that you're happy with.

Holly Wyatt:

I agree. I just challenge everybody to kind of do their own report card. I guess we gave a D to the United States, but what grade would you give yourself? And just think about what small changes you could make to just increase that grade a little bit. Just make a small change. And if everybody would do that, then we all would contribute to maybe changing the bigger report card.

Jim Hill:

So that's our physical activity report card. Progress in some areas, but plenty of room for improvement. And the next steps are ours to take. See you next time on Weight Loss And.

Holly Wyatt:

Bye, everybody.

Jim Hill:

And that's a wrap for today's episode of Weight Loss And. We hope you enjoy diving into the world of weight loss with us.

Holly Wyatt:

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Jim Hill:

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Holly Wyatt:

And remember, the journey doesn't end here. Keep applying the knowledge and strategies you've learned and embrace the power of the “And” in your own weight loss journey.