According to the Gallup Poll, 24 percent of American adults exercised regularly in 1961, and 50 percent after 1968. The peak was 59 percent in 1984, dropping off to 51 percent last September.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When I was growing up, I did not exercise at all. I was raised in the French Quarter in New Orleans. If I saw someone running, I would call the police because I thought they stole something on Royal Street.
What I found is that just in the lifestyle today, people have fewer and fewer opportunities to get exercise.
Exercise is roughly the only equivalent of a fountain of youth that exists today, and it's free to everyone.
Exercise, from a public health perspective, is an unmitigated failure. The world's longest-lived people live in environments that nudge them into more movement. They don't use power tools, they do their own yard work, they grow a garden.
Far too many times over the next 12 to 15 years, it was brought to my attention that people who followed my exercise guidelines exactly but ignored their diet, their weight and their cigarette smoking had heart attacks at age 55.
I don't generally exercise that much. I exercised a great deal in my life - at times. In periods.
In my seventies, I exercised to stay ambulatory. In my eighties, I exercise to avoid assisted living.
I'm not a sedentary person. I've always been active.
As a child, I was very active. I was a gymnast, I played touch football, netball and basketball. When I was 16 years old, I started yoga. I started working out at an early age.
When I was pregnant. I exercised and was healthy, but it was also the first time since I was 14 that I wasn't on a diet.
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