their arms in the air. Do it in off hours, please. posted by Devils Rancher at 5:41 AM on June 19 [ 2 favorites ] We need a word for volitional sedentariness. Napping? Jokes aside, I'm sure that stress is a factor. You work a long day meeting tight deadlines and for a company that treats you poorly, then you have a long commute in traffic, then a mad scramble to feed the kids and get ready for the next day. Your stress is going to impact your food choices, your leisure choices, and your big-picture choices. But the article is making an interesting point about how the baseline effort of living is dropping. Putting clothes in a washing machine takes about one millionth of the effort of carrying a basket of clothes down to the nearest river, washing them by hand, and carrying the (incredibly heavy) wet clothes back home. And work has changed -- most of us are sitting at a desk or standing at a cash register, not swinging a hammer. Those are huge changes, not something you can compensate for by doing DDR for half an hour. posted by Forktine at 5:42 AM on June 19 The decline in physical activity is partly due to technology. But diet, culture, and urban planning all play a role. Eating crappy food makes you feel like crap. And cultural promotion of physical activity makes a huge difference. So does the layout of our cities. All of these factors discourage