by Sandra Cole

Created on: September 20, 2009   Last Updated: September 21, 2009

Exercise burns calories, so weight loss and better health should follow. Activity breeds activity. As you feel more fit, you tend to increase your activity level and weight loss. Everyone can become more active. Even if you have physical limitations you can extend your periods of activity and range of motions to improve on your present level. If you have serious concerns, it is better to consult with your physician before beginning any strenuous activities, but even increasing the time you walk each day can reap benefits. Getting up and moving is the first step to a total life improvement.

Extra weight acts as an anchor to your body and life. Everything you do takes more effort, so you tend to do less. You move around less, wear clothes that cover you more and avoid activities that may make your overweight more obvious. Removing that anchor from your life enables you to move more freely through the world.

Exercise simply makes your body feel better. Your movements become effortless and stresses of everyday life seem to melt away. The world becomes more and more open to you. The endorphins pumped up during an exercise session ward off depression and fill you with a sense of wellbeing. If you build on that motivation, increasing your exercise level and duration will follow.

We need to embrace these concepts as a nation. Several years ago I taught Health Psychology to a group of Israeli nurses and their most striking observation of the American people was the number of truly obese people they saw in their travels. The American world face needs to be of people fit to be considered world leaders. An ethos of healthy living should be adopted by the population in general. Such sweeping movements do have an effect in changing behavior. A while ago a study showed that people tended to choose friends who were roughly the same weight as themselves. If we could encourage just one member of that group to change behavior, it is entirely possible that person could become a catalyst for the others in adopting better exercise and eating behaviors.

Encouraging more activity is a way to do this - whether by increasing accessibility to gyms, using video-games such as the fitness components of Wii developed by Nintendo and Electronic Arts, developing more walking and bike riding trails or just encouraging people to take a walk during their lunch period or after work.

Of course, increasing exercise has to be paired with attention to diet. If people exercise more, but eat more, chances are they won't see any changes. Education about healthy food, and the availability of those foods are other necessary components of national health improvement. Restaurants are beginning to join the crusade, preparing foods in less artery-clogging oils and offering alternatives to unhealthy burgers and deep-fried foods. Such trends are encouraging but need a booster shot which can only come from each individual as they make more and more healthy choices in their lifestyle.

Change doesn't usually come in one fell swoop, but in the hundreds of individual choices we make each day. Keeping a healthy perspective in the back of the country's collective mind, may very well begin to cure America's obesity problem.

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