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Dominic Lesiasel
Ms. Lacey
English 113
6 march 2015
Physically Active!
According to a book entitled, Health at a Glance, written by a group of researchers led
by Gaetan Lafortune stating that, In the United States, the gains in life expectancy since 1970
have also been much more modest than in most other OECD countries. While life expectancy in
the United States used to be one year above the OECD average in 1970, it is now more than one
year below the average.(Lafortune 24) This fact should open our eyes and make us realize that
we are not a healthy nation. There are a lot of things that plays a big role in our society that affect
our health as a nation. One of the reason of why we become like what we are today is mainly
because of the improvement in technology. Compared to the year 1970, the society today are
physically less active mainly because of technology. Most kids do not play outside with their
friends, most people tend to become more and more lazy, and working is not as hard as it used to
be, all because of technology. Smartphones, Laptop, Internet, Video Games, are examples of
technology that may be the reason why our life expectancy level is falling.
Although the above statement may be true, we still have to find out why are technology
damage our society in a certain way.Technology may cause severe laziness in our society, but
technology can be a posituve aspects in life also. It offers an easy access to physical activity such
as fitness apps, online gyms, smart-gadgets, and fitness video games. These things promote daily
physical activities, which can prevent obesity and improve our health, which then leads to a
prosperous and longer life.

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Physical activity has a big role in maintaining and stabilizing our health. Physical
activity is something that everyone needs daily, in order for us to be able to improve our health.
Today, more and more people are lacking in doing daily of physical activity, and this leads to an
increase in the nations obesity rate. Technology may be the reason why less and less kids play
outside with their friends. Most people nowadays are too attached to their gadgets, which causes
us to spend almost all of our life in front of the screen. Technology may have impacted our lives
negatively, but that does not mean that it does not offer any positive aspects in our lives. With the
way technology has improved, promoting physical activity via technology has been a big thing
now, thus daily physical activity can be achieved by using technology.
Technology can be one of the greatest villains in our lives, it can control our lives without
us realizing it. One of the great example of what scary things that technology can do to our body
is found in the movie Wall-E. Wall-E is a movie produced by Walt Disney Home Entertainment,
its an animated movie about how the human moved from earth to this massive spaceship.
Throughout the movie we can see how humanity relied so much on technology and causes them
to become lazy and obese. Couch potatoes, its the word the word thats best described the
people in the movie. Couch potato is the name people use to describe those who are lazy and
spend most of their time on the couch, watching television. Thats what the people in the movie
are The people in the movie has zero physical activity, they are obese (having excessive body fat)
people that only sits on their chairs everyday, playing games, watch tv, and eat. Everything that
they do can be done while they are on the chair. As the movie continues, the captain realize
something that the past captains has not seen before, it was how the ship has been controlling
them the whole entire time. Auto, the ships autopilot system was the one who controls the
human and causes them to become obese and not able to stand and walk. In some ways, Auto

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kind of hypnotized the humans by using the entertainments and gadgets causing them to be in the
position where they are at now. After shutting down auto, the captain took the ship back to earth.
At the end, the human tried their hardest to stand and walk again. Wall-E shows how technology
can control peoples life and causes laziness in people.
Before we dig into more about technology, its important for us to understand our
surrounding environment today. Wall-E sends awareness that relates to obesity, how its rate has
increased massively overtime. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), more than one third of the adults in the US are obese(Adult Obesity Facts). That is an
approximately 78 million of adults in the US, the more scary thing is that the number is still
growing. Wall-E shows us that if we dont try to make a change in some ways, just like in the
movie, most people will turn into couch potatoes in the future. The attachments that we have
with todays gadgets and also fast food diets will lead to us becoming couch potatoes. Just like
the captain of the ship from Wall-E, we need to snap out of these delusions that these
smartphones today create. We need to be able to realize that sitting on the couch the whole day
will not benefits our health, and use todays technology for better purpose.
Obesity may be one of the problem that technology brings, but although technology is
portrayed as a negative thing in mans life, the health departments are starting to use technology
to promote daily physical activity. Its a future trend of physical activity. The Internet revolves
around everybodys life, with the way technology and internet is, the best way to promote
physical activity to the society that are inactive is to use the internet, and technology. There are a
lot of gadgets, devices, and only gyms, that are one touch away from us. some of the example of
that is Nike+ Fuelband, a bracelet looking device that tracks an individuals steps, caloric burn, a

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fuel burn. Its also fun because they can compare their results with everyone around the world
who uses the device also, via internet.
The future trend of physical activity is happening now. There are a lot of online gyms out
there with decent memberships prices, mostly starting from $10/month. Online gym offers
fitness classes that they usually offer at the gym by recording the workout in video form, so that
those members who are at home or their workplace, or wherever, able to watch it while doing
their physical activity. Crunch Live, the gym box, gym cube, wello, and a lot more, these are
examples of online gyms. Each online gyms targeted different people, some targets people in
their 20s, some may target a more mature people like those who are in their late 30s. Online
makes it easier for you to reach your goals, and it is really convenient because people with little
free time can still be able to workout and do their daily physical activity at home, or wherever
they want to. The other aspect that also big in todays society is fitness applications that can be
found in our smartphones applications store. Some of the examples of the top fitness apps are,
FitBit, the Johnson & Johnson Workout, My Fitness Pal, Zombies Run!. These apps vary in
prices, some are free, and some can go up to $10 in purchase. These apps promote physical
activity like never before. These apps promote physical activity to the users, while making the
users feel like theyre playing a video game, competing against their friends. Its a new approach
that resulted in more users participating in daily physical activity.
The health promotion has evolve from time to time because of technology. Started with
DVD player, the health department uses CD to promote physical activity. Some of the examples
are, Insanity, P90X, R.I.P.P.E.D, and others. These are some timed program, meaning this
program is only for temporary, like insanity, it is a sixty day workout program. After the DVD,
physical activity is also being promoted in the internet, for example youtube videos, where

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people share their workout routines so that other people can watch and follow. There are a lot of
personal trainers who uses youtube to attract more clients. Now that smartphones are
everywhere, There are also apps that are used to increase our fitness level, and most of these are
free. Over time, technology keeps on growing, this leads to more products being made.
There are a lot of new tech savvies that are available to us, for example, adidas miCoach
sports bra, a bra that can monitor your heart rate and send all the fitness data to your
smartphones. The other example is the Athos Carpi, Athos are gears that can be worn and it acts
like a personal trainer, It has a sensor in the shirt or short that can read our muscle activity. These
are some of the examples of how todays technology helps promote physical activity, and how it
is used to maximize the workout.
Technology may be one of the cause of the increase rate of obesity in our country, but
with these health promotions thru the internet, our phone apps, and the video games, its proven
that thru technology we can promote physical activity and encourage people to stay active.
Study have shown that thru technology and internet, ones can be physically more active than
those who are without them. A quote from the conclusion of one of the research study done on
physical activity and technology, A fully automated Internet and mobile phonebased
motivation and action support system can significantly increase and maintain the level of
physical activity in healthy adults (Hurling). Out of the research that theyve done, Murray
came up with the conclusion that says, the internet and smartphones are not bad. People may
think that to be able to increase our physical activity, we have to get away from the internet or
our smartphones because they are one of the reason why we become less active, but thats not
always the case. Murray studys proof that technology can be used to help us to become more

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and more active everyday. This is the evolvement of promoting physical activity by using the
internet and technology.
Motivation and support system is important in health promotion. These two aspects are
important because health promotion will not work without having a self-motivation to change
ones lifestyle and get involve in doing physical activity. Fighting obesity is a fight that is hard to
fight, because changing a habit of a person require time and a great self motivation, and the
environmental support. Todays technology help those who are fighting obesity in a big way,
because thru the internet, ones will realize that there are millions of people out there fighting the
same fight as they are, hence it motivates the to change and become more active.
Technology allow us to be able to share and promote health promotion faster, thus leads
to improvements of ones daily physical activity. Being able to compete with other people and
trying to beat their goals provide a great motivation to people and create a more healthy society.
Although it may be too tiring and hard, its full of benefit for our future. Wall-E is an example of
the what we would look like if we dont do any physical activity in our lives, and that view of us
is not great. Obesity, laziness, and being too dependent on technology for bad reasons, leads to a
depressing life, like the life of humans that the movies shows. Exercise are important to our life
and itll prolong our life if we are active everyday.
Works Cited
"Adult Obesity Facts." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, 9 Sept. 2014. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.
<http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html>.
"Athos - Wearable Technology for Fitness." Athos - Wearable Technology for Fitness. Web. 16
Mar. 2015. <http://www.liveathos.com/apparel/technology>.

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"How Much Physical Activity Do Adults Need?" Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3 Mar. 2014. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.
<http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/everyone/guidelines/adults.html>.
Hurling, Robert, Michael Catt, Marco Boni, Bruce Fairley, Tina Hurst, Peter Murray, Alannah
Richardson, and Jaspreet Sodhi. "Using Internet and Mobile Phone Technology to
Deliver an Automated Physical Activity Program: Randomized Controlled Trial."
Journal of Medical Internet Research. Gunther Eysenbach. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1874722/>.
Lafortune, Gaetan. Health at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators. 2013 ed. OECD, 2013. Print.
News, Abc. "The Hottest Tech-Savvy Workout Wear for 2015." ABC News. ABC News
Network. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.
<http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/hottest-tech-savvy-workout-wear-2015/story?id=27961
053>.
"Overweight and Obesity in the U.S. Food Research & Action Center." Food Research Action
Center Overweight and Obesity in the US Comments. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.
<http://frac.org/initiatives/hunger-and-obesity/obesity-in-the-us/>.
"Physical Activity and Health." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, 16 Feb. 2011. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.
<http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/everyone/health/index.html?s_cid=cs_284>.
WALL-E. Walt Disney Home Entertainment, 2008. Film.