by Diane Sagers

CORRESPONDENT

I had a roommate once who was a physical education major. She loved her major and everything about athletics. I believed she particularly loved the male counterparts in her major -- whom she referred to as hunky jocks -- but nevertheless, she was also enthusiastic about getting up and moving.

One of the classes required for her major was kinesiology. In a nutshell, kinesiology is the science of movement. One of the concepts they studied was knowledge of where your body parts are in relation to the rest of your body. It meant knowing where your feet will land as you run and where your hands are as you swing them.

Having stumbled many times and smacked nearby objects with my moving hands when I exercise, I realize this is a valuable bit of information for a person to have -- and some people are much better at conceptualizing it than others.

But on a more practical level, another aspect of kinesiology is the study of physical activity. Those who study such things for a living are working at helping people to get physically active and stick to it. For folks like my roommate, it is a no-brainer. They can hardly wait to get up and get going.

However, we live in a society that encourages the couch-potato approach to life. At first, it was TV time that cut into our activity but that has now been compounded with computers and electronic communications. Have you ever sent an e-mail or text message to a person in the next room, when you could have got up and walked into the room to find them? I know of college roommates who sat back to back doing homework who e-mailed each other. Sitting around gets easier and easier.

In an effort to get people out of that mode, you can pile on the proof of what not participating in physical activity can do to you. People don't realize or may not recognize how important physical activity is. Lack of activity promotes a lot of the chronic and serious disease in our society. It carries a strong link for heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some cancers -- specifically breast cancer.

Sixty percent of the American public is overweight or obese. Obesity is not a disease, but it correlates with many diseases such as diabetes. As obesity goes up, diabetes cases follow. Projections show that the rates of diabetes will double by the year 2030. That sounds like a big number, but we are talking about only 22 years. If the trend continues, that alone will be a huge expense for the healthcare system, and obesity is a primary risk factor for the diseases mentioned above.

There is a good side to this. The word must be getting out -- at least a little. The most common force that motivates people to start an exercise program is an attempt to lose weight.

The most efficient way to lose weight is to increase physical activity and reduce calorie intake. If you only go for exercise, the weight loss will be very slow. It may take six months to see a change on the scale and since that is generally the only measure of success. People miss the good things that are happening to their bodies that aren't measured by scales.

While you are exercising, you may be gaining muscle mass, but you will still be losing fat mass. That is a good thing, but the scales don't show it. People give up too soon because they can't see it on the scale. They think "This is not working, so what's the point?"

Typically on a weight-loss program, if people can't see a positive improvement after one week, they just quit. In just one week, physiological health improves as benefits to blood pressure and lung capacity, and fat reduction and muscle tone. Unfortunately, you can't see it on the scales. The advice is to hang on, it will pay off.

If you want to make the scale note your improvements, reduce calories as well. Take a diet drink or reduce portion sizes. Add physical activity to calorie reduction and you will be able to see the weight drop off. Cutting calories doesn't have to be excruciating. If you reduce food intake by 150 to 200 calories per day along with an exercise program, you can lose weight over time.

Getting started is the key.

You don't want to be one of the national poor-health statistics. Do yourself a favor and get moving -- if not for your loved ones, make it a patriotic duty and do it for the nation.