We have been warned that exercise is necessary for weight loss, staying or getting healthy, maintaining or achieving a beautiful body and living longer. Yet 25% of Americans are completely sedentary and 60% don't participate in the amount of activity it takes to accomplish these benefits.

It isn't because people don't want these benefits or that humans are slothful creatures. Most people are unaware how easy and productive exercise can be. The problem starts with the way we define beneficial exercise.

Excuses include the problem that exercise involves driving somewhere else to do it, working up a sweat, or that getting involved in a sport is too time consuming. For people who didn't grow up in an active lifestyle, exercise seems a daunting task, making procrastination and dropping out the norm. This has now changed.

Exercise is repeated physical activity.
Few humans prior to the Industrial Revolution were overweight, and it wasn't because they never exercised. They simply went about the daily activities that supported life.

This fact has forced the scientific community to explore how daily activities, such as gardening, cleaning, etc., could substitute for exercise as we define it today. Can the common activities we perform from day to day actually yield benefits similar to those gained from lifting weights and running or pedaling?

If you don't enjoy exercise, if a gym intimidates you, or if you are inclined to always put off starting a program, your day has come because the answer to the question is a resounding YES!

Recent studies demonstrated that a certain amount of normal daily activities can accomplish results similar to those produced by traditional exercise. Benefits include lowering blood pressure and the bad cholesterol, triglycerides, losing weight and fat and increasing insulin sensitivity. And with all these an increased lifespan is the long-term bonus.

These benefits can exist even without the weight loss. Fitness is not only skin deep. The studies found that overweight people who participated in the proper amount of physical activity were more fit and lived longer than sedentary skinny people.

These studies show us that in reality any time you move you are doing some form of exercise. The intensity and duration may vary but every time you continuously shift your body against gravity, physical activity is taking place, so therefore you are exercising.

Exercise as lifestyle activities
By using our new definition of exercise we now realize that all we have to do is alter and/or add normal lifestyle activities so that our total movements burn more daily calories than the previous level that contributed to weight gain and/or poor health.

With this simple recipe you can achieve weight loss and many of the health benefits associated with more vigorous, conventional exercise.

The bottom line-You can become physically active enough by exercising while you live that you'll experience health and cosmetic changes and benefits. You may even find yourself becoming more productive in your daily life. Once you see the small changes it may even inspire you to trying more conventional types of exercise.

Daily Activity Tips-learning how to live with (or ideally without) technology
The great lifesaver that technology is, it has also become a subtle killer.

Make peace with yourself about not taking the least path of resistance
Traditional exercise is simply a method of wasting energy, something our ancestors could not afford, and therefore, taking the path of least resistance is an outdated survival method.

From now on think that all of your exercise will complete needed tasks, even if there are easier, less laborious ways to perform them. We have to change our mind set about taking advantage of technology. Only use labor saving devises when necessary or when you have accomplished your goal of daily movements. In other words avoid technology that reduces your daily energy expenditure whenever possible.

• Take the stairs instead of an escalator.
• Don't use the intercom when you can walk down the hall.
• Don't feel smart when you find the closest parking place; don't take it.
• Make physical activity the focal point of family gatherings rather than food.
• If you like to shop go everyday without your wallet or purse and walk the malls.
• Select one large garden and house project a month to use as your additional physical activity.
• Make recreational activity substitutes -with or without children
• Increasing your movements to burn 100 calories a day has the same effect as removing 100 calories from your food intake
• Pick activities that you like