Seems every diet book ever published has a chapter devoted to exercise but it’s probably the least likely chapter to be read.  Or followed.  The Institute of Medicine also tells us how much exercise we need each week to maintain optimum health, information that could prove invaluable during this time of epidemic obesity.  The US Health and Human Services Department (HHS) issues exercise guidelines, too, but a new report issued by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that, even with all that published data to spur us on, Americans are just not exercising enough to offset the calories we consume.

The latest guidelines issued by HHS, this past October, call for a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate activity each week.    Two and one-half hours of brisk walking, scattered over the course of a week, is a perfectly OK way to satisfy this exercise goal but, according to the CDC, hardly more than 65% of the adult American population meets that goal.

Even fewer of us would pass the test if we followed the more vigorous guidelines recommended by the Institute of Medicine.  The institute says we all need no less than an hour a day.  Ouch!

The federal government implemented the ‘Healthy People 2010′ initiative as a way to combat the expanding obesity problem.  About one-third of all Americans are clinically obese, another one-third is overweight.  Either condition flirts with disaster where cancer, diabetes, and heart disease are concerned.

The CDC contacted 399,000 adult Americans by telephone to ask about exercise habits and reached a rather unpleasant conclusion – only about 49% of us are meeting the initiative’s goals of 150 minutes of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity (like running) each week.

Conflicting guidelines do confuse the issue but the bigger problem is the American tendency to shun exercise in spite of its remarkably healthful benefits.  The CDC report suggests we not worry so much about a rigid schedule but just get moving instead.  According to the agency, 150 minutes of moderate exercise over the course of the week, on any schedule at all, makes a healthy difference.

But back to those diet books.  Reading them while working out on a treadmill is perfectly fine exercise and it satisfies the American drive for multitasking, too.