persuasive essay

Your Name

Professor

November 18 , 2007

Stop Making Excuses : You Don 't Believe Them Anyway

Everybody knows that beginning an exercise program can be difficult and nobody needs to tell you that it 's good for you , but that doesn 't make it any easier to start doing it . Most of us understand that we should do it , but we can 't quite figure out how to do it . We argue that we don 't have time , we 're too old or too out of shape to exercise or just plain

don 't feel like it . So , with that in mind , we will approach the excuses people use most often as reasons not to exercise and explain why those excuses should be overcome

The first reason that people give for not exercising is the claim that we don 't have the time . We won 't insult people but telling them what they already know : any exercise is good exercise . By now you know that exercise is good for you , and that you should do something on a regular basis . What 's the best time for you to exercise ? Anytime . Honestly . For example , when you 're sitting and watching TV , stretch your muscles Never stretch so hard it hurts . Rather , stretch to the point of mild tension and hold the stretch for 10 to 30 seconds ( Making Time 2007 . The reality is that we do a lot of things every day that we don 't think we have time for . We wait in traffic for what seems like hours on end . We wait in lines . We talk of the phone . The truth is it all comes down to desire . If we want to exercise , we find the time to do it

The next excuse people like to use is that they are too old to begin an exercise program . We all know someone who began exercise at middle age or later and accomplished things that they never thought they could do like a 70 year old woman who starts lifting weights or a 65 year old man who runs a marathon . But studies have shown that it doesn 't have to be anything that extreme . Enjoyable Light Exercise Cuts Death Risk Dramatically . A study of 9 ,611 adults showed that those who were regularly active in their 50s and early 60s were about 35 percent less likely to die in the next eight years than those who were sedentary . For those who had a high heart risk because of several underlying conditions , the reduction was 45 percent (Bumgardner , 2005 . In addition , risks of osteoporosis are significantly decreased in people who do weight-bearing exercises . The concept of suffering a debilitating injury from osteoporosis is in many ways more devastating that the thought of death . How many of us want to end up in a nursing home unable to care for ourselves because of a preventable broken hip

The third excuse people often use for not exercising is that they are not healthy...