Roy Rasmussen, from the human kinetics department at St. F.X., gave a presentation at the People’s Place Library Thursday evening titled Don’t Slouch on the Couch: Be Active, Be Healthy. (Richard MacKenzie photo)

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February is Heart Month and a full community room, at the People’s Place Library Thursday night, heard how they can help their health with a little lifestyle adjustment.
The words came from St. F.X. human kinetics professor Roy Rasmussen and his presentation titled Don’t Slouch on the Couch: Be Active, Be Healthy.
Rasmussen said he was pleased to have the opportunity to give the talk and happy to see a strong turnout that was interested and engaged.
“Over the years I’ve done dozens of these sorts of presentations for the Heart and Stroke Foundation,” he said. “The focus there was on heart disease whereas this one had a different gist to it. This was talking in more general terms. A little bit on physical activity, getting started there, and then on trying to reduce the intake on the diet side to deal with our weight control.”
Rasmussen pointed to some alarming data which illustrates the problem of no, or little, physical activity being combined with too much intake.
“I was just trying to point out to people that we have this big weight problem in our society and we have this big physically inept type activity problem in our society,” he said.
“Two-thirds of our population is overweight or obese and two-thirds of our population is inactive. Of the two-thirds who are overweight half are truly obese and of the 60 percent who are inactive, half get no activity at all. No health benefits.”
The answer he said, for a lot of people, doesn’t have to be a drastic life adjustment but one of adding a little more activity combined with reducing some calories.
“I just wanted to give them some information on how to lose weight gradually,” he said. “Not to look at it as a diet but just a small lifestyle change in terms of how many calories they consume and then a small increase in the amount of activity they get so that they’re going to expend some more calories. Over the run of a week, they should lose a pound and if they’re a little more aggressive they should lose two but no more… so you don’t talk about going on some ridiculous diet.
“There are small changes that will work,” he added.