So you blew off going to the gym at all last week. You’re not alone. Only 33 percent of Americans in a survey said they got strenuous exercise three or more days a week in 1992; that’s 4 percent fewer than a year earlier.
Stressed out? Join the club. One out of three said they felt under great stress almost every day, or several days a week, 5 percent more than a decade ago.
Tired? Only 58 percent of Americans said they got at least seven or eight hours sleep a night, down from 64 percent a decade ago.
A new Lou Harris poll on Americans’ health habits released Thursday finds more people are eating more of the wrong foods, carrying too much weight, speeding when driving and generally doing a poorer job taking care of themselves than just a few years ago.
The poll, one of a decade-long series sponsored by the medical manufacturing firm Baxter International, offers disturbing news just as health-care experts are trying to count on better personal habits to help curb the country’s $900-billion-plus annual medical bill.
The survey found two-thirds of Americans are overweight, up from 58 percent in 1983. They are also more overweight: About one-fifth were 20 percent or more above ideal body weight, compared with 15 percent in 1983.
And only 44 percent said they try to avoid cholesterol, which is linked to heart disease. That is down from 50 percent in 1991.
The trends, said Humphrey Taylor, president of the polling firm, raise concern because almost all areas on the survey had been showing steady improvement up until about three years ago.
“It’s quite likely the healthier lifestyles of the ’80s were just a passing fad,” Taylor said.
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On the plus side, 70 percent of those polled said they usually wear car seat belts, up from 19 percent in 1983. Seventy-six percent don’t smoke, and 88 percent said they drink moderately or not at all.
While the poll of more than 1,200 Americans didn’t ask people why they’re leading less healthful lives, Taylor and other experts at a news conference suggested a combination of economic and social influences: people working longer hours, making less money, having less time to prepare healthy meals, and a constant marketing drumbeat to eat foods they shouldn’t.
“For whatever reason, we give up and we quit trying,” said Olympic gold medalist Florence Griffith Joyner, who earlier had joined a delegation presenting the study findings to Hillary Rodham Clinton, head of the White House task force on health-care reform.
Mrs. Clinton has mentioned the need to change personal behavior as a way to cut health costs.