… at least for long periods of time, like the amount of time I spend on the computer. The Harvard Alumni magazine has an interesting article on health and exercise, The Deadliest Sin. The article covers all of the regular recommendations: exercise more, eat less, etc, but it really stresses how sedentary our lives have become in very recent history. The authors claim that even if you get the recommended 30 minutes of exercise a day, it’s still not good to sit for the rest of the day. That’s bad news for those of us who have computer jobs!
Another interesting tidbit from the article is that based on our anatomy they think that humans (in all except recent history) actually ran a lot. Not walked a lot, ran a lot.
Which reminds me of the Amish health study I read. Researchers, surprised by the low levels of obesity in Amish populations in spite of diets rich in eggs and bacon, strapped pedometers on several of them and found they walked between 10-20 miles a day!