Recent reports on the extremely low levels of physical activity in the Canadian population tell us that few Canadians (7% of kids and 15% of adults) are meeting recommended levels of physical activity.
Does this explain increases in percent of the population counting as overweight or obese? Not so fast. In Inactivity Does Not Explain Canada’s Obesity Epidemic Dr Arya Sharma notes that the real take-home message is that physical activity levels are low in all groups, not just among those who are overweight and obese.
From Dr Sharma:
…if we convert the rather modest differences in MVPA levels taking into account the increased effort required to move higher body weights, we would find almost no difference in actual calories spent in activities to account for any difference in body weights. Thus, to me at least, these data pretty much blow to pieces the widely held bias that overweight and obesity can be largely explained by lack of activity or that overweight and obese individuals are less physically active (read “lazy”) than “normal” weight individuals.
He concludes,
Continuing to link the necessary discussion about inactivity to the problem of obesity is not only scientifically unfounded but, by dangerously and unfairly reinforcing stereotypes (not reflected in the actual data), may well do more harm than good when it comes to tackling both the epidemic of obesity and the epidemic of sedentariness.
Read the rest. It’s a very interesting post.
