My exercise is on track for February. As of last night, I have exercised 1215 of the 1300 minutes that is my goal. That means an average of 45 minutes today and tomorrow which shouldn’t be a problem.

I had a low energy week last week and my minutes slipped, including three zero minute days. But I got back on track with two big days the last two days. With the weather so nice, I was able to tack on one or two walks to my normal workouts and that really helped boost the minutes.

I’m about a third of the way through the book Instant Recess by Toni Yancey. She makes a convincing argument that from a public health perspective, we might be better off emphasizing exercise rather than nutrition as a solution to the obesity epidemic. I’m sure I’ll be writing more about that in coming weeks.

Even though Instant Recess is a book about public policy not individual behavior, it’s helped me make a change and, by example, my husband, too. We watched the Academy Awards on Sunday night and the Daytona 500 last night (have you seen the fire? Highlights: Daytona Explosion. Fun to watch only because everyone was safe).

In previous years that much television would have meant several consecutive hours of sitting, but we got up and walked, danced, stretched, and did other deliberate movements because I read in Instant Recess how dangerous it is to sit for too long.

Here’s the quote from the book that has me getting out of my chair many times a day:

Researchers have already begun to examine the physiology of inactivity, as distinct from the physiology of exercise, arguing that the risk of adverse health and metabolic effects (for example, abnormal cholesterol levels and lower glucose tolerance) from prolonged periods of sitting is independent of, and equal to, the risk of not getting enough exercise (Owen, Bauman, and Brown 2009). For instance, recent studies have found that the number of times people get up and move is linked to their weight, independent of the total number of minutes they spend moving–thinner folks are up and down more often (Hamilton, Hamilton, and Zderic 2007[pdf]). p. 8

In other words, my 45 to 60 minutes of exercise a day isn’t going to help that much if I spend the other 15 hours of my waking day in a chair. So what are you sitting there for? Get up!

Visit today’s post at Bookworm with a View for more CHECKpoint posts of bloggers’ reporting their fitness endeavors: CHECKpoint! Feb 28. This would be a good day to join us — you could set your goals for March and join us with reports on Tuesdays.