Forget Sweat: Discover Incidental Exercise

by Adriane Fugh-Berman, M.D.

I once inadvertently stayed at a fitness spa, an experience approximately as pleasurable as being in jail. “It’ll be fun,” my friend told me, “We can stay there for free if we give lectures.” My friend neglected to mention that this particular spa was a place where people go to lose weight, and that they would try to pass off as lunch a teacupful of watery soup and half a slice of bread topped with five shreds of dry cheese. The chief entertainment was exercise classes (the list was so exhaustive I had to go lie down after reading it). To relieve my stress, I then had a massage while lying on heated river stones, which made me feel like a roasting chicken (a remarkably unrelaxing image). As a souvenir, I got perfect, river stone-shaped, first-degree burns on my back.

The one good thing I got from my vacation from hell was the term “incidental exercise”, which the spa’s material noted was encouraged by the many gardens and the facility’s sprawling campus. What a great way to decrease complaints about the huge distances between exercise classes and the dormitories, and the lousy meals. That, and the promotion of the tiny servings of food as all being part of the spa’s calorie-burning plan!

You may have gathered that I dislike exercise classes. I do love walking, though, so now I can call it “incidental exercise”, which maybe people will think is some novel type of yoga.

Incidental exercise is movement in the ordinary course of a day; for example, walking to the corner store, carrying groceries, or climbing steps in a house or office.

It turns out that those of us who live in cities get much more incidental exercise than do suburbanites, who, it appears, ambulate only to their driveways. Nearly two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and part of the reason is the design of urban and suburban developments, which cater only to cars. The suburbs (and cities as well) may lack sidewalks or put barriers in pedestrians’ paths. It can be downright dangerous to take a walk in a megastore parking lot. I worked at one office that I walked to from the subway station about half a mile away, and I felt I was taking my life in my hands every day. Because there were no sidewalks for part of the journey, cars whizzed by at high speed only inches from me, sometimes honking, presumably because they had never seen a pedestrian in that part of town before.

Increasing exercise can be difficult, especially for people who aren’t used to it, but walking more often is something that most people can do. Government studies show that fewer than six percent of daily trips in the U.S. are made on foot, and only a quarter of American’s trips of less than a mile are made by foot. Part of the problem is the design of both cities and suburbs; few areas encourage pedestrian or bicycle traffic. Two large studies in 2003 found that people who lived in sprawling cities and counties walked less, weighed more, and suffered more hypertension than those who lived in denser, more compact communities. New York, Boston, and other older cities were built for walking; there are also lots of walkers in college towns and cities that contain military bases.

Parking further from one’s destination is old advice, says another friend, who adds that the other benefit is that: “It makes it easier to find your car if you don’t park it where everyone else does.” Another great way to increase incidental exercise is to use the stairs. The only exercise one friend of mine gets is climbing stairs to his office, which is nine flights up. He does that two or three times a day, and it seems to keep him in shape.

A study of more than 10,500 people in Atlanta found that time spent in a car correlated with obesity. The more people walk, the less overweight they are, and “high-walkability” neighborhoods have a lower incidence of obesity. We need to encourage people to use their feet (and bicycles) in urban or suburban planning and development. Perhaps increasing gas prices, if nothing else, will encourage us to become a nation of pedestrians.

REFERENCES

Harder B. “Weighing In on City Planning: Could Smart Urban Design Keep People Fit and Trim?” Science News January 20 2007; 171(3):43. Available online at: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070120/bob9.asp

Moore MT. “City, Suburban Designs Could be Bad for Your Health.” USA Today April 22 2003. Available online at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2003-04-22-walk-cover_x.htm

Adriane Fugh-Berman, M.D., is an associate professor in the Georgetown University School of Medicine, Department of Physiology, and a former chair of the NWHN.