remember your first step? what a fuss everyone made! and then you continued to walk right on through childhood adolescence and into adulthood but somewhere along the way like most adults you probably stopped walking so much. in fact the percentage of adults who spent most of their day sitting increased from 36. 8% in 2000 to 39. 9% in 2005! part of the reason may be your hectic stressful life with not a moment to spare for recreation or formal exercise. the environment plays a part too; inactivity has been engineered into our lives from escalators to remote controls to riding lawn mowers to robotic vacuum cleaners to electric toothbrushes to the disappearance of sidewalks and safe places to walk. but research shows that all this automation is bad for our health. inactivity is the second leading preventable cause of death in the united states second only to tobacco use. you'd think a simple activity like walking would be just that simple. but fewer than 50% of american adults do enough exercise to gain any health or fitness benefits from physical activity. is walking our salvation? i don't know for sure but evidence suggests that it's probably a good start.
why don’t most people get enough exercise?