There you are, sitting on the couch again, watching TV instead of exercising. You know you should get up and get to the gym, or even just take a brisk walk around the block, but something's stopping you.

You¹re deep in the clutches of the evil couch potato syndrome.

Physical inactivity (often referred to as "sedentarism") is a major contributor to heart disease, osteoporosis, adult-onset diabetes and cancer. If you're sedentary, you're doing too much sitting around and not enough exercising, and that combination may be putting you at risk.

Too many of us are doing too much sitting these days. A recent study found that more than 79.5% of men and 87.3% of women were "sedentary" ‹ expending less than 10% of their daily energy in performing moderate or high-intensity exercise. Among active men and women, two fairly basic activities (sports and walking) were the main exercises performed.

So if you're one of those people who don't exercise enough, take some advice from the ones who do. Moderate exercise can be easy and fun to integrate into everyday life, and can include activities such as biking, walking, swimming... even gardening. Get off that couch and do something about your health. It's one of the best decisions you¹ll ever make.

Reference:

Bernstein MS, Morabia A, Sloutskis D. Definition and prevalence of sedentarism in an urban population. American Journal of Public Health, June 1999: Vol. 89, No. 6, pp862-67.