In an age of increasing overweight and obesity it is important that we perform purposeful exercise and promote it to our patients. I attended the American College of Cardiology meeting in Orlando held over 6–9 March 2005. To see if physicians would ‘practice what they preach’, I sat at the bottom of an escalator and recorded the activity of attenders on the escalator over a 1 hour period of time (11:47 am to 12:47 pm 8 March 2005). Two-thirds of the 234 users of the escalators made no movement other than getting on or off the escalator despite there being no obvious impediment to them doing so. We ask our patients to change their lifestyles and yet clearly fail to do so ourselves.
- © British Journal of General Practice, 2005.
