A new study suggests obese women only get one hour of vigorous exercise per year while obese men get less than four.
"They're living their lives from one chair to another," Edward Archer, a research fellow with the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told HealthDay. "We didn't realize we were that sedentary. There are some people who are vigorously active, but it's offset by the huge number of individuals who are inactive."
About one in three Americans are obese, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, HealthDay reported. Being obese can increase one's risk of heart conditions and other life-threatening issues.
Researchers looked at medical records that outlined the weight, diet, and sleep patterns of 2,600 adults between the ages of 20 and 74. Accelerometer devices were used to track the participants' movements, but the researchers noted they did not properly measure biking and swimming activity.
"Vigorous activity" was defined as exercise such as jogging, not including sexual activity. They found the average obese man gets about 3.6 hours of vigorous activity a year while obese women get only one.
"The data was there, but no one looked at it and parsed it the way we did," Archer told HealthDay. "there is a great deal of variability; some are moving probably a fair amount. But the vast majority [of people] are not moving at all."
"Traditional exercise approaches are not the way to try to get obese people active -- the barriers are just too great. However, we showed a number of years ago that encouraging multiple brief periods -- five to 10 minutes two to three times per day -- was an effective way to get individuals active initially. Once they started to become more active in this way, they started to add even more activity." John Jakicic, chair of the department of health and physical activity at the University of Pittsburgh, told HealthDay.
