Retirement Investing - Invest In Your Health

Papabear — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 05:07:40 +0000

Let’s take a break today from talking about investing money and talk about investing in your health. After all, what good is the best retirement investment plan if you’re not healthy enough to enjoy it when the time comes.

One of the most important things we can do to stay healthy, as we get older, is to control our weight. Most of us know that, but most of us also fall victim to “middle-age creep”, as the pounds creep on a pound or two every year, after we reach middle age.

Now a recent study from the University of Pittsburgh says that walking can go a long way in helping to control that extra weight. Researchers studied 3 groups of people. The first group was given general guidelines for exercise, which included moderate daily activity for 30 minutes a day. The second group was told to be active for about 30 minutes a day, plus they were given weekly classes on the importance of exercising. The third group was told to exercise 45 to 60 minutes a day, and they were given behavior modifications classes.

All of the study participants were told to eat a healthy diet but not to restrict the number of calories they ate. About 75% of all the participants chose to use walking for their exercise.

The results after 18 months? Averaged over the 3 groups, 40% of the folks in the study gained weight, about 7 pounds on average. These were primarily those people who did not exercise regularly. 60% lost weight, once again about 7 pounds. These were exclusively those who engaged in physical activity for about 40 minutes 5 to 7 days a week. That’s a 14 pound difference between the two groups, almost all attributable to exercise, primarily walking.

In another study, researchers at the University of North Carolina analyzed data on about 5,000 young adults over 15 years. They found that those who walked at least 2 hours each week gained about 9 pounds less than those who did not.

The results of these two studies are very clear. Time spent walking, or any other aerobic physical activity, is a very good retirement investment. It’s also a good investment of our time before we retirement so that we can stay healthy going into the retirement years.

exercise