There is always time for exercise

People can always find time to exercise, they just often do not see their potentially free time, and this motivates a sedentary lifestyle. That's the conclusion researchers drew from U.S. residents.

According to a study published in Preventing Chronic Disease, on average, Americans report 5 hours of free time a day. Most of that time is spent watching TV or using electronic devices like smartphones or computers.

For the study, researchers used data from 32,000 people who took part in a national survey that collected information on Americans' time use from 2014 to 2016.

There is a common belief among people and even among health professionals that lack of free time is an important reason why Americans are not physically active enough. We found no evidence for these claims, said study co-author Dr. Deborah Cohen of the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization dedicated to improving health policy. 

The authors took a fairly rigorous approach to defining free time, excluding time shopping, cleaning, cooking, self-care, and time spent with children. Even so, they claimed that people of all ethnic groups and all ages had about 4.5 hours of free time. 

Most of the free time of the people whose habits were examined in the study was spent looking at screens: 175 to 211 minutes a day. Men were physically active for only 6.6% and women for 5% of their free time.

That said, the study found that people with higher incomes tended to devote more time to exercise.

Increasing people's awareness of how they actually use their time and calling for encouragement to reduce screen time can help people become more physically active, Cohen suggests. That said, the authors believe there needs to be a comfortable environment for physical activity to successfully compete with electronic devices.