The easy answer to weight loss? It takes work, persistence

September 29, 2004

By George Mc Laren

To burn more calories -- and let's face it, we need to burn more calories -- we could train for a marathon or work out in the gym five times a week.

But it doesn't have to be that hard.

"We try to get people to just move," says Heather Hedrick, assistant director of educational services at the National Institute for Fitness and Sport. "Just get up and walk down the hallway, or go up and down the stairs, or walk farther."

Do something.

What's our problem? We simply love things easy.

"Everything's about convenience now. There's drive-through everything," says Bryan Stednitz, assistant director of fitness for the division of recreation at Indiana University-Bloomington. "Food especially. You just go through a drive-through. It's convenient."

Good for saving time, bad for health.

Stednitz and other health experts say Americans would be a lot better off if everything weren't so easy.

Good health, he says, "is about increasing physical activity. It's about not waiting in a Wal-Mart parking lot for the closest space, and taking the stairs instead of the elevator."

One goal is to incorporate muscle movement -- any type of movement -- into whatever activity you're doing.

"Most people, when they watch TV, they sit there for two to three hours," Stednitz says.

It's not that health experts advise getting up right now and going out for a marathon.

"The message we're trying to get across to the public is, you don't have to exercise vigorously to achieve health benefits," says Patty Freedson, exercise professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. "We like to think the alternative trend of activities for health is lifestyle activities.

Freedson suggests starting out easy -- say, taking a 30-minute walk several times a week.

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