The Movement Towards Fitness Not Thinness

Market Wire, May, 2008

Most people describe their days as frantic and busy, but if you take less than five thousand steps before you hit the bed, you're not only inactive, you're sedentary.

Being active is the message behind, "Move Yourself: The Cooper Clinic Medical Director's Guide to All the Healing Benefits of Exercise" (Wiley, 2008). Drawing upon the thousands of patients who have visited Dallas' Cooper Clinic, Dr. Tim Church and Cooper Clinic medical director Dr. Tedd Mitchell have found that it is pure activity that makes the difference when it comes to our health.

"There is no pill or substance that can produce as many health dividends as physical activity," says Church, a former lead researcher and director at the Cooper Clinic who now serves as professor of preventive medicine at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University. "Unfortunately we are inundated with exercise programs and workouts that are too complex and time consuming so most people skip it. If you're sedentary, you should not even engage in an exercise program; the focus should be simply on increasing movement."

"Move Yourself" is unlike many prior fitness books because it advocates activity, not a plan. Rather than designing a regimented workout plan, Mitchell and Church advocate the use of pedometers to track the number of steps you take in a day. Once you reach 8,500 steps, they say it's okay to graduate to a formal exercise program.

"The focus should be on fitness not on thinness," says Mitchell. "Americans are at a very critical juncture when it comes to their health, so simply moving more must be the new fitness movement of the 21st century or disease will continue to skyrocket."

"Move Yourself," can be purchased at major bookstores, Amazon.com or at the Cooper Fitness Center on Preston Road.

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Media Contact: Amy Summers 727-848-1618 ext. 202 Email Contact Pitch Inc.