The vast majority of people live with the holy faith in the fact that obesity is caused by a wholesale growing excess calories consumed. Yes, lack of physical activity also plays a role, but the main reason - we are more and more eating. That is, you now bring in the order of your meal plan, and extra weight gradually go away, even if you continue all the time to sit and lie down.
It is surprising that a recent study researchers residing in one of the most obese countries, opened an interesting fact.
Over the past 20 years, people actually did not eat more. But it is much less move.
This statistic applies well (maybe even more), and to the citizens of Russia, and therefore treat this text with due care.
Acute lack of physical activity not only affects middle-aged men, tied to an office chair. Young people, in whose early age is actively moving, doing the same thing - sitting in front of computer screens, smartphones and tablets day long.
Yuri Ladabaum, a professor at Stanford Medical School, decided to determine the ratio of the importance of food and activities on the basis of medical data obtained from federal NHANES program. He took the information for 1988 and compare it with the performance in 2010.
Professor expect to see growth in the number of calories consumed in the last 20 years, but it turned out that people did not eat more.
These results are quite surprising, especially given the trend of increase in the average size of the portions and the popular notion that we eat more and more.
However, Yuri immediately clarifies:
Perhaps we consistently overeat, but the data do not show any significant increase in calories consumed over the years.
Perhaps as early as 1988, Americans ate too much, but it did not result in such a massive obesity. But the dynamics of physical activity really stands out from the other indicators, and demonstrates an extremely strong decline.
In the 1980s, 80 to 90% of people one way or another engaged in a certain physical activity every day. Now about half of Americans in general are not active, and these data, according to George, greatly underestimated, as many people tend to exaggerate their daily labors.
Physical activity has decreased in all age groups, but the most surprising degree of decrease in activity among people between 18 and 39 years old. Below are the data for the US, but you can easily transfer them to our social group.
- The number of white and African-American female with a lack of any activity has grown more than three times. For the natives of Mexico, this figure has almost doubled.
- The number of white and African American male with a lack of any activity is also increased by more than three times. For the natives of Mexico, this figure has doubled.
Ladabaum said that against the background of such data still do not forget the food factor. What's worse: overeating or laziness? In this case, you can not choose the worst of the two evils. Both are unacceptable.
The problem is compounded by the lack of activity of the changing labor market, a significant portion of resettled people in comfortable offices.
In 1960, one in two Americans worked in the work, which included a complete physical activity. By 2008, there are very few Americans, whose work is not connected with a permanent seat in the chair.
These are the words of Tim Charcha Professor Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University. His research shows that now only one in five Americans moves at work. However, this statistics based on official data, but in practice, the ratio may well be 1/10.
We've all seen those old photos of the sixties, where the people involved in the assembly of machines. They take the bumpers and install them on the body. Now look at a modern assembly. In the shops there are no people. One robot takes part, another robot fixes it.
Charch went ahead and calculated the number of excess calories that arise due to lack of activity. For men, the figure is 140 kcal per day. For women - 120 calories per day. It seems not so much, but consume them every day, and the result will not take long.
So what to do office workers, forced to sit in a chair all day? In such a situation becomes critical activity after hours. It's not necessarily talking about serious sports. If we talk about the very excess of 140 kcal, they may be able to compensate for the daily 30–40 minutes of walking at a moderate pace.