ATLANTA -- Almost one in five Americans is very physically active, but a larger proportion, one in four, gets virtually no exercise, a new government report says.
The finding comes from a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that is the first to examine how much people exert themselves not just in their time off, but during an average day spent at work, homemaking or in retirement or unemployment.
The result is a more comprehensive assessment of Americans' appetite for exercise. Its finding, though, falls in line with previous studies that assessed only leisure time activity: Significant numbers of Americans exert themselves very little.
"The percentage of people who are getting the message that they should exercise isn't changing very much," said Patricia Barnes, a health statistician with the National Center for Health Statistics, who is one of the report's authors. "We still have a ways to go."
To reach the new assessment, the study's authors combined two measures: how often and how hard people exercise in their leisure time, along with how much of the day people spend sitting, standing, walking or carrying objects. Using that combination, they found that 19 percent of Americans have a high level of physical activity, while 25.3 percent did little physical activity, or none at all.
The study, "Physical Activity Among Adults," is based on 32,374 phone interviews conducted in 2000 with American civilians older than 17. The study showed that those who are sedentary during the day don't compensate once they get a day off.
"People who are more active in their daily lives were more likely to do regular leisure-time physical activity, and people who were less active during the day were less likely," Barnes said. "Most people think if you are active on your job, you won't be active in your leisure time, but our study showed the opposite."
According to the study, being more active is slightly more common among men than women; among those with higher degrees compared to those who attended only high school; and among whites compared with Latinos and African-Americans. Southerners were less likely to be active than residents of any other region in the United States.
The federal government recommends that Americans do at least 30 minutes of physical activity on most days of the week as a way of reducing weight and lessening the odds of developing heart disease, diabetes and other chronic health problems.
M.A.J. McKenna writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
