Your best friend is overweight. She has begun adopting new eating patterns and now wants to add physical activity to her weight-management program. She asks you for recommendations as to what kind of physical activity is best. Based on what you know about physical activity and weight management, what advice do you give?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Clearly, physical activity is a plus in a weight-management program. What kind of physical activity is best? Any number of physical activity programs may be equally effective at reducing body weight and improving body composition when combined with a low-kcalorie eating pattern. People should choose activities that they enjoy and are willing to do regularly. What schedule of physical activity is best? It doesn’t matter; a person can benefit from either several short bouts of exercise or one continuous workout. Any activity is better than being sedentary. For an active life, limit sedentary activities, engage in strength and flexibility activities, enjoy leisure activities often, engage in vigorous activities regularly, and be as active as possible every day.
Health care professionals frequently advise people to engage in activities of low-to-moderate intensity for a long duration, such as an hour-long, fast-paced walk. The reasoning behind such advice is that walking offers the health benefits of aerobic physical activity with low risk of injury. It can be done almost anywhere at any time. A person who stays with an activity routine long enough to enjoy the rewards will be less inclined to give it up and will, over the long term, reap many health benefits. A regular walking program can prevent or slow the weight gain that commonly occurs in most adults. An average of 60 minutes a day of moderate-intensity activity or an expenditure of at least 2000 kcalories per week is especially helpful for weight management. Higher levels of duration, frequency, or intensity produce greater losses.
In addition to exercise, a person can incorporate hundreds of energy-expending activities into daily routines: take the stairs instead of the elevator, walk to the neighbor’s apartment instead of making a phone call, and rake the leaves instead of using a blower. Remember that sitting uses more kcalories than lying down, standing uses more kcalories than sitting, and moving uses more kcalories than standing. A 175-pound person who replaces a 30-minute television program with a 2-mile walk a day can expend enough energy to lose (or at least not gain) 18 pounds in a year. Even walking in place during the commercials of a one-hour program can increase activity time by 25 minutes, steps taken by 2100, and kcalories expended by 150. Meeting an activity goal of 10,000 steps a day is an excellent way to support a healthy BMI. The point is to be active. Walk. Run. Swim. Dance. Cycle. Climb. Skip. Do whatever you enjoy doing—and do it often.