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 FITNESS FITNESS 

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HEALTHY LIVINGHEALTHY LIVING

Mountain View News Saturday, August 23, 2025

UNLOCK YOUR LIFE


FUN BUT NOT FITNESS


Michele Silence, M.A. is a 37-year certified fitness 

professional who offers semi-private/virtual fitness 
classes. Contact Michele at michele@kid-fit.
com. Visit her Facebook page at: michelesfitness 
Visit her Facebook page at: michelesfitness.

FIGHTING THE LONLINESS EPIDEMIC: 
A Call To Real Connections

We live in a time when people want to count everything as 
exercise. Any movement at all gets called a “workout.” Although 
many activities are fun, relaxing, and even a little active, 
they don’t really deliver the kind of benefits your body 
needs to stay strong, prevent disease, and improve fitness.

The difference comes down to this: activity is not the same 
as exercise. Activity is moving around, doing things, and 
burning a few calories here and there. Exercise is purposeful. 
It raises your heart rate, challenges your muscles, and 
improves endurance, strength, or flexibility in a way that 
builds your health over time.

Some activities give people the feeling that they are exercising, 
but the reality is quite different. Here are some examples.

Golf

This one surprises a lot of people. Golf is a wonderful sport 
for relaxation, socializing, and spending time outdoors. But 
unless you are walking the course and carrying your clubs, it doesn’t give you much in the way 
of fitness. Think about it: if you drive a cart from hole to hole, take a few swings, and then stand 
around chatting, your heart rate hardly goes up at all.

Golf does improve focus and coordination, but in terms of cardio or strength, it’s just not 
enough. If you love the game, try walking the course instead of riding, and skip the caddie. 
Carrying or pushing your own clubs while walking miles across the fairway can turn golf into 
more of a workout.

Bowling

Bowling is another fun, social activity. It can get competitive, it gets you out of the house, and 
it’s a blast when you’re with friends. But fitness? Not so much. Rolling a heavy ball down a lane 
a few times an hour doesn’t challenge your body in a meaningful way. You’ll get some coordination 
practice and maybe a little arm strength, but that’s about it.

Bowling is better thought of as entertainment, not training. If you want to get exercise at the 
bowling alley, consider walking there instead of driving. Otherwise, enjoy it for what it is—a 
good time with friends.

Darts and Pool

Both darts and pool are excellent for hand-eye coordination. They make you focus, calm your 
nerves, and refine your aim. That’s all great for your brain and social life. But your body? Not 
tremendously helpful. Standing around a pool table or tossing darts won’t increase your heart 
rate, build muscle, or burn more than a handful of calories.

These activities belong in the “game” category rather than the “exercise” category. Good for 
relaxation, bad for heart health.

Fishing

Fishing has a well-deserved reputation for being peaceful and stress-relieving. Time on the 
water can do wonders for your mental health. But unless you are paddling a kayak, rowing a 
boat, or hiking to your secret fishing spot, there isn’t much physical challenge involved. Casting 
a line and waiting for a bite won’t make your heart or muscles any stronger.

Leisure Biking

People see someone riding a bike and assume it’s automatically great exercise. And it can be, 
but only if the pace and effort are there. Cruising around the neighborhood at 5 miles an hour 
on a beach cruiser, stopping every few blocks, doesn’t do much more for your body than a slow 
walk.

To make biking count as fitness, you need to ride at a pace that raises your heart rate and keeps 
it there. Think steady pedaling, a little sweat, and maybe a hill or two. Coasting along for the 
scenery is fine, but don’t mistake it for training.

Casual Gardening

Gardening is one of those things people often list as exercise. And yes, some gardening tasks—
like digging, hauling heavy bags of soil, or pushing a wheelbarrow—definitely get your muscles 
working. But light gardening, like planting flowers, watering, or pulling a few weeds, just 
doesn’t meet the standard.

Casual gardening is more about movement than fitness. It’s good for flexibility, and it can burn 
a few calories, but it won’t improve your endurance or strength in a way that counts. If you 
want to make gardening exercise, turn it into a real workout: dig deeper, haul heavier loads, 
and move at a steady pace.

Don’t confuse any of the above with real exercise. Exercise has three key parts:

• It raises your heart rate and keeps it elevated.

• It strengthens your muscles or bones.

• It challenges your endurance, flexibility, or coordination in a way that improves health.

If what you’re doing doesn’t hit at least one of those, it’s not exercise. And while activity is good, 
your body needs exercise to truly thrive.

In spring 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy put words 
to what many of us already felt deep in our bones: America is 
suffering from a loneliness epidemic. He defined loneliness as “a 
subjective distressing experience that results from perceived isolation 
or inadequate meaningful connections”—the painful gap 
between the relationships we long for and the ones we actually 
have.

Many forces contribute to this national ache, and the COVID-19 pandemic only deepened 
it. But rather than despair over the diagnosis, we can take it as good news. Once a problem 
is named, we can begin to heal it.

When Neighbors Were Friends

I think back to a time when neighbors were more than names on a mailbox. Dropping 
by a friend’s home unannounced wasn’t just normal, it was expected. If you were in the 
neighborhood, you stopped in. Kitchens kept extra snacks “just in case” because surprise 
visitors weren’t an inconvenience; they were a delight. No one worried about a perfectly 
curated living room. What mattered was connection. Though there were plenty of plastic-
covered sofas. 

Today, we often substitute scrolling for socializing, mistaking a highlight reel on Instagram 
for true intimacy. But watching someone’s feed is not the same as sharing their life.

Simple Steps Back to Each Other

Rebuilding connection doesn’t require grand gestures, it’s about small, intentional choices:

Use your phone for its original purpose. Make a call instead of sending a text. Let yourself 
hear laughter, sighs, or the pause that speaks louder than words.

Open your home. Keep it simple, order pizza, host a potluck, or invite a friend for a walk. 
What matters is the gathering, not the menu.

Loosen your grip on perfection. Homes are for living, not performing. Show your real, not 
your staged, life.

Say yes more often. Even when the couch is tempting, choose connection.

Practice forgiveness. Old grudges block new possibilities.

Volunteer. Service opens doors to both purpose and people.

Reconnect spiritually. Whether it’s been months or years, most communities welcome you 
back with open arms.

Assume goodwill. When misunderstandings arise, choose the most generous interpretation.

The Bottom Line

We are built for connection, not isolation. In a world more wired than ever, what we crave 
isn’t another notification, it’s eye contact across a table, laughter echoing on a walk, or the 
comfort of someone simply showing up.

The cure for loneliness isn’t complicated. It’s reaching out, saying yes, and inviting people 
into our beautifully imperfect lives.

Lori is a transformational coach and host of the Unlock Your Life Podcast with Lori Harris. 
Learn more at loriaharris.com

Lori A. Harris

ALL THINGS by Jeff Brown


OUR MOON & AN IMMENSE WORLD

Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion 
Transformed the Planet, Guided 
Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are 

by Rebecca Boyle

Many of us know that the Moon pulls on our oceans, 
driving the tides, but did you know that it smells like 
gunpowder? Or that it was essential to the development 
of science and religion? Acclaimed journalist 
Rebecca Boyle takes readers on a dazzling tour to reveal 
the intimate role that our 4.51-billion-year-old 
companion has played in our biological and cultural 
evolution. Our Moon’s gravity stabilized Earth’s orbit—
and its climate. It drew nutrients to the surface of 
the primordial ocean, where they fostered the evolution 
of complex life. The Moon continues to influence 
animal migration and reproduction, plants’ movements, 
and, possibly, the flow of the very blood in our 
veins. While the Sun helped prehistoric hunters and gatherers mark daily time, early 
civilizations used the phases of the Moon to count months and years, allowing them 
to plan farther ahead. Mesopotamian priests recorded the Moon’s position in order to 
make predictions, and, in the process, created the earliest known empirical, scientific 
observations. In Our Moon, Boyle introduces us to ancient astronomers and major figures 
of the scientific revolution, including Johannes Kepler and his influential lunar science 
fiction. Our relationship to the Moon changed when Apollo astronauts landed on 
it in 1969, and it’s about to change again. As governments and billionaires aim to turn a 
profit from its resources, Rebecca Boyle shows us that the Moon belongs to everybody, 
and nobody at all. A New Yorker & Smithsonian Best Book of The Year 

An Immense World: How Animal Senses 
Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by 
Ed Yong 

New York Times Best Seller• A “thrilling” “dazzling” 
tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive 
the world that will fill you with wonder and forever 
alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning Ed 
Yong. The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds 
and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic 
fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is 
enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving 
but a tiny sliver of our immense world. In An 
Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines 
of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the 
skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses 
of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles 
that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s 
magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, 
and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We 
discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as 
a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that 
plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops 
have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their 
tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the 
field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved.”


Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com