Move Your Body!

Washington Post writer Esther Cepeda interviewed me last week to this article on women and gym. The real question was as follows:

Why are Americans so out-of-shape?

American women lack of exercise, shortening its life extends

Esther J. Cepeda, Washington Post Writers Group

Here are two realities totally disagree with the other millions of Americans celebrated the woman late last week World Cup, during which some of our biggest, strongest athletes competed for dominance in the field, and yet ignore the millions American women whose health deteriorates to the point that they have a shorter life than their mothers.

It is shocking that 39 years after the landmark legislation of Title IX, which really helped our football goddess to be celebrated internationally, there is still a common perception among some women, sport or physical activity are excluded.

This terrible mental fog is not an unfortunate result of a lack of opportunities children or gender discrimination, but a symptom of increasingly common motherhood. Women who have either participated in sports such as children or staying physically active in their young adulthood hit a brick wall when they begin to combine a career with couples and families.

"It 'happened to me," said Barbara Hannah Grufferman, Manhattan-based feminist and author of "The Best of Everything after the 50" "In my 30 years at the end I was a workaholic and a rabbit gym essential, but Then I met my husband, my family began, it was my second son is 41 and was still working, still want to be friends, be involved in the Community, and to do everything. Fitness was the first thing I dropped my life, because it was absolutely impossible to adapt it I really stopped to think about it, and then I realized it really is important to look forward to my future, I would have done the time. "

The life of American women depend on them to do at that time. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, recently published data show that a significant reversal of the development of public health, the life expectancy of women is reduced 313 U.S. counties. Other public health statistics, over 60 percent of women are obese, about 35 percent are obese, and even worse, less than half of all women 25 and older meet the federal guidelines for aerobic exercise compared with 51 percent of men.

It is a function of lack of resources or overwork. Women are more likely to live in poverty - which alone makes them less likely to have sufficient resources to exercise - than men and married women who work spend an hour more than men for household and s occupation of household members, including children and parents and a half hours less per day engaged in leisure and sports than their husbands.

"All of a sudden you turn around and you have 50 years, the children are gone, you have osteoporosis or who are experiencing menopause difficult as you say, 'Oh my God, what should I do?" "Grufferman said." The only answer is to prevent, even by a priority now, today, without feeling guilty. "

Women of all shapes and weights are reducing the quality and duration of their life because of the lack of physical movement. For the same reason, women of all ages, sizes and income levels benefit from the exercise, even small additions to their lives, especially because the work as the office jobs that keep them on their sticks all day.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a person with a completely sedentary lifestyle can achieve health benefits from as little as five to 10 minutes of activity such as walking every day.

"Do not give more of yourself to work or take on the draft supplement to the school board to give it back to you now," said Grufferman, who at 55 was in the best shape of his life. "Forget the money for a gym or a coach - walk for 15 minutes and do some weight training action generates another time you start making rapid action, it connects to another good action ... You just need to get started. "

Most mothers have these words of advice well-meaning but totally unrealistic - just out of question. But, ladies, and it's great to cheer up their families and heroes of the room, someone so important and useful to the beats of the heart: you.