What has changed in Health & Fitness in the past 30 years?

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There have been many changes in skill over the past 30 years. It is human nature to reminisce about the past. It’s great, but let’s not forget that things change as well. This is certainly true in the field of health and fitness. “If you do what you’ve always done, you will get the results you’ve always got” is true, but what if the situation changes? What then used to work is no longer viable and effect way to get the results we want. In this article I will outline seven things that have changed in the past 30 or so years that affect the way we view health, fitness, exercise, and what is considered “best”. Let’s look at some of these changes in Fitness.

1. Activity

This change in ability is fairly straightforward. We just do not move around as much as we used 30 years ago.

Now, the average sedentary person living in urban 900-3000 takes steps a day. Uh … it’s a puny number! In the journal of sports medicine current literature was pulled together to set general criteria for what a good number of steps per day was

Author Dr. Catrine Tudor-Locke mean different movement steps, per- day equivalent. A ratio of less than 5,000 classified as sedentary, low active 7.499 5000, 7500 to 9999 is somewhat effective or more 10,000 active and 12,500 or more is very active. So what does 900 make us? Nearly dead! But it is hard to imagine. Get out, take the elevator to the parking lot, drive a car, take the elevator to the office, sit down, order fast food, reverse the process to go home and go back to sleep. Just to note, 1km is about 1300 steps.

It got to the point where we have to intentionally inconvenience us for our activity level up. Here are some suggestions (which actually show us how tragic average activity levels of our activities have become).

Park at the far end of the parking lot and walk to the building instead of dropping the kids off in front of the school, park several streets before it and walk the rest of the way … 10,000 is actually considered a low estimate for the children.

Go round the shopping center or supermarket at random. With excellent shopping today, this is a big thing!

Take the stairs instead of the lift or escalator (well if you work on the 50th floor, maybe climb half way to start)

Give the dog an extra 5 minutes walking time (we need it even more than he)

Stop emailing colleagues in the same office, in order to go over and talk to them (the monstrous success considering how much email we send every day! … Great for building team as well)

Go for a walk during lunch break, walk to get lunch or find somewhere to eat lunch

get up and do something, run up and down stairs eg TV ads (no excuses here!)

Walk at the corner store instead of driving or dad on the way home

walk to friends house instead of driving

Take public transport and walk from the station

Dr. David Bassett studied Amish community to see what it was like in the past. These guys have no cars, no electricity and make hard manual labor to put food on the table. as time to travel to the past. They eat three large meals a day with plenty of meats, vegetables and natural starches such as potatoes.

98 Amish adults surveyed Bassett wore pedometers for a week. The men average 18,000 steps a day. The women took an average of 14,000 steps.

The men spent about 10 hours a week doing manual labor such as plowing, shoeing horses, tossing hay bales, and dig. The women spent about 3.5 hours a week of heavy chores. Men spent 55 hours a week of moderate activity; Women reported 45 hours a week of moderate chores like gardening and do laundry. Wow that’s a lot of manual labor. Get a pedometer (just like her 20 bucks) and see how you go.

2. Fat Percentages and Obesity

Working brings us right to this point of obesity. The scary obesity rate is one of the most obvious changes in fitness.

The obesity rate among participants in the study of Amish population was 4 percent, as determined by body mass index, or BMI. The current obesity rate among the urban population is 30% or more. OK obesity rates are scary thing because obesity is already “very high risk of a lot of bad ways to die” category. It is still overweight category (obviously fat but not hitting medically obese range) to consider. These people are at high risk already!

Aggregate percentage of overweight + obese are really wild … hitting nearly 70% in some cities. Compare that to the average in 1980. 10-15% of obesity in most cities. It rose in the mid-20% in 1995 and that now at an all time high.

3. Diet

OK linked No.2 team is of course diet. This is another obvious change in fitness. Its very simple really. We now eat more refined foods (white bread, sugar, rice, flour, noodles). In the body they give pretty much the same response – fat storage. The only time we should eat these items immediately after hard training. As we can tell from the point No.1, not much of the training is going on. But a lot of eating is!

We also eat less fresh fruit, vegetables and meat. We eat more snacks like chips and cookies (which are also cleaned despite what advertisers keep).

These changes skills are made more concerned that even natural foods today are not as good for us as they used to be. Current farming methods make vitamin and mineral content in fruits and vegetables reduced by 10-40% by minerals. Corn eat meat does not give us as good omega 6 to omega 3 ratio of like we used to get from grass fed and free range animals. (It does not have so many healthy fatty acids for us)

And of course we are also simply consuming more calories. Amish people in the study in point No.1 ate about 3600 calories / day for men and 2100 calories / day for women. Many sedentary people consume this much and more! How? Well ideally “feature” gourmet coffee from Coffee Bean or Starbucks can add up to 500 calories in an instant caffeine folly.

There are 2 hours of walking for an average sized lady.

Just remember, calorie Quality Counts as well. 2000 calories of vegetables, meat and healthy fats is infinitely better than 2000 calories from French. close to impossible to get fat in the first, and almost impossible to get fat to second.

I like this car analogy. If you had a 2million dollar dream car, you would put low grade or high grade gasoline into it? High grade course! Then why do some set low grade filth in their bodies that are so much more important than the car we drive?

4. Games kids play

The average child grows up in the urban motor-skill weak. As a hobby, I train youth basketball. The talent scouting our kids do I have a very simple drill of dribbling in and out and around the cones. There are so many guys who can not do it and some that I think might fall down if asked to run around the cones without the ball! This is in contrast to the past where children ran around, chased each other, played physical games and sports of all kinds, where the playground was fun center for children. This lack of activity not only causes a change in the ability for the child in his / her youth, but has profound long-term effects as well.

Of course this change in ability is the result of a combination of potential factors.

Parents are only academic success to be worth striving for, which only give a child recognition and praise when they do well in academic subjects.

An educational system that also evaluates the book knowledge above other things and takes away physical education classes to put more theoretical lessons in.

Illa taught PE lessons not not help the child develop motor skills in key early years Busy double income families where fathers are not free to play with their children (or do not care enough money is … not all dads)

The video game addiction maddening situations in real life is more important than reality. I believe this is why all the empty basketball court in my neighborhood. It used to be the team lined up to play there. Now only people my age (late 20s to 30s) play. No young guys are there anymore.

But really, so what? The issue is that if they stink at sports and exercise is well known psychological factor of “competence” is coming. Simply put, generally, we do what we’re good at. If the next generation is poor in sport and exercise, they are even less likely to do any of that! Which together with points 1 to 3, making for a deadly health crisis in many countries. Obesity costs the UK 7.4 billion in national health care a year! If we do not help our kids, which is only going to grow to be bigger and bigger burden for everyone.

5. Social Support

This is a more subtle change in fitness. People are social animals. We stick with things because it is supported community behind us. Even drug and alcohol rehab centers recognize this. We all need social support. But social relations are getting stronger. And no, not MySpace Friendster links do not provide for it.

The more connected and less close world (I know so many people who are only comfortable behind a computer screen and not in front of a real person) there is less social support than in the past (large families, communal living, strong friendships in the neighborhood etc. ) and hard to stick with something that demands dedication and sacrifices as exercise program. I am not a sociologist, but I believe that is why the lessons do better in terms of membership and individualized training. Most of them are certainly not as effective as much individual coaching. But the social aspect is entered when maintaining a lifestyle change is involved.

6. Free Time

This subtle change in ability is pretty clear. We just have less time to “own”. The officers, social, family and other commitments do free time very valuable commodity and it adds difficulties that the time is just not our renewable resource. When we choose to exercise or spend time cooking to maintain a healthy lifestyle, we are competing with movies, games, TV and other parts to spare. We know that exercise is good for us, but it has not only be good for us, it has to be better in our minds but the latest episode of Desperate Housewives, or the latest computer game. That’s it. We need to prioritize long-term health of temporary fun.

7. training

OK here is where we are doing well. 30 years aerobics craze took the western world by storm. its not a very good training process, both in terms of performance and in terms of performance per unit time. Add the fact that we have such minimal time to train, we can not afford to train in a sub-optimal manner. We know a lot more now. Fortunately for us, there are good strategies that smart coaches used to improve training efficiency and get results even with less training time. Some of these include smartly designed resistance training, interval training and good technique to determine his needs. If you have a coach like that in your corner, you can turn back the clock and avoid becoming one of the ever-growing statistics of people’s health is heading in the wrong direction. Stay fit and strong and good luck!

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Source by Jon Wong

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