“Did you exercise today?”
“No, I didn’t have time.”
This kind of conversation happens every day among Americans. For a long time, “lack of time” has been thought as one of the biggest barriers to exercising, however, a recent study suggests that "lack of time" may be just an excuse in most cases.
Americans have more time than they thought
It is generally believed that Americans do not get enough exercise due to lacking leisure time. To verify this perception, the researchers studied 32,000 Americans aged 15 and older from 2014 to 2016. The results are rather surprising.
It turns out people had an average of more than 5 hours of leisure time each day. Men even had a bit more leisure time than women. Besides, African Americans had an hour more leisure time per day than Caucasians and 1.5 hours more than Hispanics.
In other word, Americans actually have leisure time, and they should have had time doing exercising. So how much time do Americans spend on exercising?
Americans spend too little time on exercising
According to the study, women spent an average of 5% of their leisure time doing exercise, while men spent an average of 6.6%.
Instead of exercising, they spent most of time looking at screens, which includes watching televisions, checking phones and pads, playing video games, etc.
Now you can see, it’s not that you don’t have time to do exercise, it’s just that you spend too much time on other insignificant things.
Studies have shown that lack of exercise may lead to 8% of the deaths in the U.S. each year. If you can become more physically active, you may lower your risk of various chronic diseases.
So, from today on, devote 20 or 30 minutes of your screen time to do exercise. This can make a good start to a healthy living.
