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Health and Exercise

Today I would like to talk about health and exercise. June 21st was National Yoga Day, so I thought this would be a good topic to talk about. How people diet and exercise in Japan is different from how people diet and exercise in the U.S.

To begin with, the U.S. is not a very healthy country when it comes to food. Many people eat a lot of fast food and many people eat meat every day, usually more than once a day. The portion sizes are generally bigger in the U.S. than in Japan. In Japan, people eat a lot of rice and they don’t eat as much meat as in the U.S. However, in Japan many young girls start dieting from a very young age and Japanese women are in many cases, very skinny.

I think the problems with diet in the U.S. and Japan are opposite. While Americans don’t watch their weight and maybe eat too much, Japanese (especially women) tend to not eat enough and diet a lot. What is considered normal in western countries is considered “chubby” or even “fat” in Japan.

Something else that is interesting is exercise regimes in Japan versus the U.S. In the U.S., both men and women really like lifting weights and doing a lot of weight training. Even women these days want to get six pack abs and have clearly visible muscles. Men also want very big muscles, so they drink extra protein shakes and take lots of supplements.

In Japan, it seems that having too many muscles isn’t a good thing. People tend to stay very skinny, even if they work out a lot. Since women in Japan are expected to be small and thin, I don’t think they weight train as much as American women. Because of this, I find that yoga is extremely popular for women in Japan. For Japanese men, the only people I see with very big muscles are usually sports players.

These are the main differences I see in Japanese and American diets and exercise.

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