Somehow We're Walking More and Walking Less At the Same Time

More than one-third of adults in the U.S. have not walked for more than 10 minutes straight over the course of the last week. People typically walk about 3 miles per hour, so a 10-minute walk covers just about half a mile. That's like walking two-and-a-half laps around a football field, or walking halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge, or walking about four average city blocks and then turning around and walking back. All this is to say that 10 minutes of walking isn't that much. And still, about 38 percent of the adult U.S. population can't even manage to do it just once in a week.

At least they couldn't in 2010, which is the latest data available and is the basis of a new report out from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But if 38 percent of adults sounds like a lot, comfort yourself by looking back at the numbers from 2005. Back then, more than 44 percent of adults didn't walk more than 10 minutes at a time.