More adults in the US say they are exercising at the same time more of them are becoming obese.
About 24 percent of adults last year said they exercise enough each week to meet government recommendations for both muscle strengthening and aerobic exercise, according to a large annual health survey.
That marks a 21 percent in 2015, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The same survey says 31 percent of adults indicated they were obese last year, up slightly. Another, more rigorous government study has also found adult obesity is inching up.
A man runs along the Schuylkill River on Kelly Drive in Philadelphia. More and more Americans are running and working out, but the number who are obese is increasing, too (file image)
So if more Americans are exercising, how can more also be getting fatter?
Some experts think the findings may reflect two sets of people – the haves and have-nots of physical fitness, so to speak.
‘It’s possible the people becoming more active are already normal weight,’ said John Jakicic, director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Physical Activity and Weight Management Research Center.
The numbers come from an in-person annual national survey that for more than 60 years has been an important gauge of US health trends.
Roughly 35,000 adults answer the survey every year, including questions about how often, how long and how vigorously they exercise in their leisure time.
The survey gives a good sense of trends, but it’s not perfect. People generally overstate how much they exercise, just as they overstate their height and lowball their weight, Jakicic said.
Ten-year-old federal recommendations say adults should do weightlifting or other muscle-strengthening exercise at least twice a week.
They also advise adults to do at least 75 minutes a week of high-intensity aerobic activity, such as running, or 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise, such as brisk walking, or a combination of the two.
Accompanying these guidelines, the agency launched a ‘Healthy People 2020’ initiative in 2010. Its aim was to have 20 percent of Americans working out by 2020.
With 22.9 percent of people now meeting these requirements, that goal has been handily surpassed.
In a report being released Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at survey responses from 2010 through 2015 and found that level of leisure-time exercise was more common in some states than others.
Nearly a third of non-elderly adults in Colorado, Idaho, and New Hampshire met exercise guidelines. Only about one-seventh in Mississippi, Kentucky and South Carolina did.
Higher levels of exercise were more common in people who were working than those who weren’t, the study also found.
Nationally, exercise levels were flat during the years covered by the CDC report. But more recent data show more adults said they were exercising at recommended levels in 2016 and 2017.
It’s not clear why, said Jena Shaw Tronieri, a University of Pennsylvania weight-loss expert.
One possibility: Many adults exercise to manage stress, and the last two years have seen increasing political and social turmoil.
‘I don’t know if that will explain the increase recently, but we know those situational factors are part of the context,’ she said.