Physical Activity and Goals

Abstract Introduction: Regular physical activity (PA) is essential for a healthy lifestyle, yet many US adults fail to get the recommended amount of PA. While initiating improvements in PA is an important first step, sustaining PA is essential to experience the health benefits of PA. Hence, there remains a critical need to identify approaches to get individuals to initiate and sustain PA. Existing reports that the type of PA goal an individual pursues is related to sustained PA whereby individuals with PA goals focused on personal growth or interest are associated with higher levels of sustained PA than individuals with goals focused on outcomes of PA such as weight loss or appearance. However, there are several gaps in the existing literature. One is that the literature on goals and PA has focused almost exclusively on white, female subjects. A second gap is that studies utilize assessments of PA goals that are most relevant to younger, healthier subjects (i.e., undergraduate students), and fail to reflect PA goals relevant to adults in a primary care clinic setting. Objective: The objective of the present study was to examine whether physical activity goals of individuals in a primary health care setting were related to whether or not they met PA guidelines established by the Centers for Disease Control. Methods: Six hundred and twenty six adults (41.1% African American, 40.6% White, 6.4% Asian, 4.9% Other, 3.8% Hispanic, 1 % Native American) were recruited from the waiting room of a primary care clinic over a 30-day span. Participants completed a 1-page questionnaire about PA and goals. Results: The most commonly mentioned PA goals included: Weight maintenance, overall health benefits, stress reduction, weight loss, tone/shape of body, sense of well-being, cardiovascular health, and energy level. Logistic regression analyses showed that African Americans were more likely to report weight loss and weight maintenance as one of their most important PA goals than were Whites. Furthermore, Whites were more likely than African Americans to adopt overall health as a PA goal. These results held even after controlling for self-reported overall health. Conclusions: African American subjects were more likely than were White subjects to endorse PA goals that past literature has found to be unrelated, or negatively related, to sustained PA. In contrast, White subjects were more likely than African American subjects to report holding a goal that is a positive predictor of sustained PA. Implications of these findings are discussed