The numbers game: Stats about steps, weight maintenance and drinking
You’re not wearing out shoe leather nearly fast enough
Not if you want to put in the 10,000 steps per day that the fitness experts recommend. According to James Hill, who helped found America On The Move, a group promoting active living, which did a study of our national pedestrian behavior, the average American only logs some 5,300 steps in a typical day.
Hill suspects that even those of us who want to meet the 10k standard come up short because we simply overestimate how much walking we do. To rectify that, he suggests acquiring a pedometer, finding out what your current daily step count is, and making an effort to increase it by 2,000 steps per day until you hit the magic ten thou.
Weight maintenance and the five-pound backslide rule
One of the more demoralizing aspects of weight loss is the difficulty — in many cases, the seeming impossibility — of keeping all the lost weight off over time. A certain amount of weight regain seems inevitable, but at what point does it reach a tipping point, beyond which the dieter can no longer control it?
A study conducted by Brown University looked into this matter and came up with a “safety zone” figure of five pounds. If you find that you’ve regained that amount or more, it’s time to crack down, cut back on the calories, fats, and carbs, and ramp up your exercising. Let things slide beyond that, and you risk losing a grip on your behavior and undoing all your progress.
All things (cough) considered, we’re (wheeze) feeling great
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducts telephone surveys on an ongoing basis in order to compile health-risk data on Americans aged 18 and above. They just released the latest poll results, which contain some interesting and occasionally ironic statistics. Here are a few examples.
- People over 20 who are overweight: 36.5%
- People over 20 who are obese: 25.8%
- People who have engaged in some recreational physical activity in the previous month: 22.8%
- People who smoke: 20%
- People diagnosed with coronary heart disease: 11.8%
- People who say that they are in good, very good, or excellent health: over 85%
Wine as diet aid? We’ll drink to that
On the one hand, we are told that wine in moderation can be beneficial to our health. On the other hand, wine is an alcoholic beverage, and alcohol is notoriously caloric, right? So what is the health-conscious person to do?
The answer, according to the Harvard School of Public Health, is “Bottoms up.” That’s based on the school’s study of 50,000 women, which found that those who had one alcoholic drink per day gained less weight than abstainers. With two drinks, however, any benefit lessens.
Health professionals speculate that wine in moderation could make dietary sense because (a) alcohol may in fact help the body burn calories, (b) alcohol contains zero fat, and (c) most non-alcoholic alternative beverages are more caloric than vino – -a five-ounce glass of red has just 125 calories, for example, compared to, say, a Starbucks venti cappuccino at 180.
(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)
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