Even Mild Activities Can Help Keep You Healthy, Fitness Authorities Say

You don’t have to run marathons to become healthy. Leading fitness authorities now say that while being active and exercising vigorously every other day is good for your physical and mental well-being, taking part in mild activities such as walking and gardening is also a good way to obtain similar health-related benefits.

“At one time, the national interest in marathon running discouraged a lot of people from getting involved in exercise because it was the criteria against which everything in fitness was compared,” says Jack Wilmore, chairman of the department of kinesiology and health education at the University of Texas, Austin. “The feeling used to be that if you weren’t running marathons, then you were doing relatively nothing to promote good health.”

This notion was far from the truth, Wilmore says. “We now know that we probably created more damage than good with marathoning,” he says. “There were a lot of injuries, and that’s something to be concerned about.”

Wilmore, who once ran 19 marathons in an eight-year span and regularly put in 90-mile training weeks, says people are redefining exercise.

“My wife said I was spending more time with my training than I was with the family,” says Wilmore, “She was right. I was wrong.” Now he runs 25 miles a week, easily working his exercise in with family obligations and a busy schedule at the university.

‘Do Something’

Peter Francis, a fitness expert and professor at San Diego State University, sees the new trend to “do less, but do something” as a healthful one. “Rather than let exercise interrupt life as it used to, many people currently view exercise as a functional activity that they try to adapt to their life style,” says Francis.

“People are now out in great numbers walking or riding a bike to the grocery store or work. They’re wheeling their children around in strollers. The more active parents are also using special jogging strollers so they can get more of a workout.”

Francis predicts a new boom in sports programs for children, with parents becoming more involved with both coaching and watching. Being a spectator is healthful, says Francis, as long as it doesn’t involve sitting. “You can burn a lot of calories running up and down the sidelines watching your children play soccer,” he says.

To get more people active, fitness expert Kathy Smith of Los Angeles believes that a new word is needed to replace exercise . “This word should be movement ,” says Smith, the fitness correspondent for TV’s “Today” show.

“Exercise makes too many people think of work, and they shy away for that reason. But if they thought of movement instead, getting out and just moving their body in some way for at least 15 to 30 minutes a day, you’d certainly get a lot more people finding out how easy it is to become healthy.”

Too many people have the misconception that they have to pack up and go somewhere for an hour at a time to get this movement in their lives. “It’s a lot easier than people realize,” says Smith.

“If you regularly take a bus or car to work, get off farther away than usual and walk. At lunch hour, go out for a walk. Become creative with your time. If you have a family, involve them in your movement. I often take my 7-month-old daughter and meet my husband in the park during lunch hour, and we go for a nice walk.” When the weather is bad, Smith says, she will ride her stationary bike at home for a half hour with her daughter on the mat beside her.

“The options that you have to keep from becoming bored with exercise are endless,” says Judy Shepard Missett of Carlsbad, Calif., founder of Jazzercise, a dance fitness program that now attracts about 500,000 students.

“Go for a walk one day,” Missett suggests. “Take an exercise class on another day. Some days you can use an exercise videotape at home or else go for a swim, ride a bike, use different pieces of home-exercise equipment. If you’re near snow, try skiing. If you’re near water, try windsurfing or just swim.”

Exercise researchers have found that people who are even moderately active live longer than their sedentary counterparts. But, even so, getting started is often the hardest part.

“Don’t think of becoming active as a hardship,” says fitness expert Denise Austin, of Alexandria, Va. Pick something that you like to do, and if the activity is fun and convenient, you’ll do it reguarly out of habit, just like brushing your teeth.