Ha, my favorite is the warning signs on the treadmills at the gym.

*Warning* Do not over exert yourself.

If you go to the gym to not exert yourself, you might as well go home. IMHO.

Yes, go home, and spare the rest of us from your complaints that it is too cold in the gym. Try breaking a sweat. (Note: It's really warm in my gym, and I'm really bitter about it).

NO! Warm pools kill me! I can't breath and get so tired. if you can stand around in the pool and not shiver then it's to warm.

It kills me to see how lazy our country is getting. Have we really gotten to the point where walking for 30 minutes is considered exercise? It's just a pet peave (sp?) of mine when standards are lowered because the majority can no longer meet them, we do it all the time in the Army.

okay, I don't know about you guys, but if I only walked 20 min a day, 5 days a week, and ate all that they tell you you should be eating, I would be as big as a house

The guidelines are established to induce health benefits not to meet fitness goals. Hopefully if people follow theses guidelines they become interested in physical activity and continue beyond theses standards. Truth of the matter is if the guidelines were more vigorous no one would do it. Think about the people who get virtually no physical activity a day. Having them perform vigorous acuity immediately will lead to failure to comply or even risk of injury.

Put gas back up over $4.00 per gallon. Our LBS had people digging bikes out of their cobwebbed garage corners, bus ridership doubled, and people I have never seen walking were suddenly trudging the 1/2 mile to the store instead of driving, when gas was more expensive a few months ago.

Last week, we payed 50.00 Euro (about $68.00) to fill up **half** the gas tank of a very very small car that we rented in Italy (for one day). But getting on the train was cheap, easy, convenient, and the streets were full of people walking in every city and town we went to. We've had subsidized fuel here in the U.S. for so long that people have gotten out of the habit of self-transportation, and our governmental systems (trains, busses, etc.) no longer support it.

One of my projects for next summer is to try to get a "Saturday Stroll" going on Saturday evenings in our neighborhood. One of my favorite things about visiting countries like Italy and Spain is the automatic evening stroll that everyone in town seems to take (even in chilly November when we were in Spain, the streets were filled). I figure if I can get our neighborhood market to have some kind of promotional thing (wine tasting, crackers and cheese) and people know that their neighbors will be out, it might just take off. Also we're working on "Walk and Roll" days each month when a major thoroughfare in town will be closed to all motorized traffic.

Yes, pools are too warm if they are over 70, but my gym keeps it warm for the old people to piss in. And the spin classrooms are kept at <70 with fans on high for the fat girls.

It's absolutley pathetic. Luckily most of us (on this site) should have healthy kids because we lead by example. My wife thinks it's hilarious when my 4 year-old stretches with me (OK, it is pretty funny), but he sees me doing healthy things and wants to mimic that, which is pretty cool. The other day he wanted to ride his bike to the local track and run a lap...his idea. Duathlon!

I think Matt Lieto just finished at Kona?

my cereal box this morning had the new food pyramid on it and as part of the small print suggested "60-90 minutes of exercise each day for sustained weight loss"

good thing they didn't have that in big print...you'd have heard the thud as people fainted from the prospects of it! ;)

So this is the "No Child Left Behind" of fitness? Nice. I suppose it's good to show the unmotivated "Here, that's all you have to do to be healthier. Not so bad, right?" But then dropping the standard so that more people can clear the bar by default is just playing with statistics.

When in doubt, muck with the statistics...

It's cool that the government takes the time and money to find out what physical activity best for me. However, they aren't using their time and money, they are using my time and money. I'd prefer my tax dollars were spent on police, roads, national security.

Well, I didn't mean literally subsidized fuel as in the govt. taking your money and using it to lower the price of gas. What I meant is that the true environmental costs of our fuel habits have been hidden from us - we don't really pay the true cost of the gas we buy (cost to environment, road building and repair, people's health, etc.). Case in point, in yesterday's elections, a bill got passed in my city that increases property taxes to pay for road repair. So while I'm commuting on my bike, I'm paying for the potholes caused by my neighbor in his SUV. This is an example of govt. "subsidizing" the true cost of fuel. If fuel goes in a vehicle, and that vehicle damages the road, the tax money to repair it should come from the fuel, IMHO.

In many other countries, gas prices more accurately reflect the cost to society of driving a car. Also, other countries have much greater transit infrastructure in place, something that is missing in America because we have designed our cities around the automobile. We haven't invested adequately in bicycle access, trains, light rail, etc. like many other countries have done, so when fuel prices eventually get high enough to reflect reality, many of our citizens simply cannot get around.

Well, suffice it to say I won't touch that one with a ten foot pole. Can you say "Can O' Worms"???

All i'll say is "hope for change, prepare for disappointment"