I don't know where I'd be without my classes at the uni gym (FYI, I stopped being a student many moons ago). Exercise is amazing and wonderful, but people (well certainly I) need a regime. I know it's pie in the sky, but if you want to get people active, state funded classes would be the way to go. There is one thing exercise does that is critical in delivering health benefits. The very first and unnoticed fat deposit that goes when you exercise is the most dangerous: visceral fat. The fat that enrobes your organs, loving caresses your kidneys to death, your gut, your heart. If all you do is exercise that deposit will go even if you lose no subcutaneous fat and with the increase in bone density and lean muscle from the exercise the scales may not even notice. That is why many give up exercise after only a few weeks, because the scales say nothing has happened. We need the message that it has happened, even if you can't see it. My body has two distinct modes, sedentary and exercising and going from the first to the second, after only a couple of runs is like a switch has been pulled. I feel different, better, more alert, more energetic, more optimistic. Primarily I exercise because I enjoy it, I enjoy doing it and I absolutely love how it makes me feel compared to being sedentary. That is what gets me out when it's dark, cold and