The Frightening Truth About Couch Potatoes

What is the importance of exercise? Is regular exercise really necessary, or some lie made up by the sports and gym industry to make sure they continually increase their bottom line?

Think of your body the way you think of your car. When a few lucky individuals acquire a sports car that boasts of the best automotive engineering available today, they read the maintenance manuals religiously.

They take their car for inspection even if it purrs like a kitten, and take it in for repairs as soon as something does not feel right. And they’re very concerned.

That car is their most prized possession, a symbol of all the long and hard hours they put on the job so they could finally acquire it. It cost an arm and a leg, so taking care of it is a high priority.

But how important is the person that drives that car? Shouldn’t that person – shouldn’t you – be the number one priority?

Lifespan and Physical Appearance

The average human life span of Westerners today is around eighty years, give or take a few. The painful truth is, a significant number of men and women look and feel 80 before they even make it to the first half of their life! You can spot the tell-tale signs just by a glance:

• sagging dry skin;
• unsightly posture;
• uneven and unsteady walk (they need to drag around those heavy pounds);
• slowed movements due to aching joints;
• sporting the “I’m not happy because I look terrible” look.

Now, if their appearance is this bad, imagine what the inside machinery is like! Most likely, it’s even worse:

• clogged vessels;
• inefficient heart, just waiting to fail;
• mounds of fat parked in or around vital organs;
• high blood sugar;
• free radical cells that are silently growing into malignant tumors.

Are you getting the picture of the importance of exercise? If fitness authorities had it their way, they’d create legislation to make exercise mandatory as soon as a baby leaves the cradle. Instead, many children live – like their parents – a sedentary lifestyle, and develop obesity by their teenage years.

But even if you’ve never exercised before in your life, it’s not too late to start! Just as quitting smoking dramatically decreases the high risk of lung cancer you’ve incurred over the years by the habit, beginning to exercise can begin to reverse some of the unhealthy conditions existing in your body.

Of course, if you’ve hung around The Crunchy Coach for any length of time, you know that I will insist that a pristine diet is as equally important as fitness in living longer with less illness and disease. But the importance of exercise cannot be overstated, and if you have been a couch potato it is time to don those tennis shoes and take a good walk!