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I called a friend recently to remind him of a promise to get back in the gym after the first of the year. He had been quite regular until September and had stopped smoking and dropped 30 pounds.

Unfortunately, he had started smoking again and gained back those 30 pounds along with 5 extra.

An admitted workaholic, he acknowledges the need for regular exercise but just has trouble committing the time. So I quoted him a cartoon I have: "What fits your busy schedule better, exercising one hour a day or being dead 24 hours a day?"

What I hear too often in response is "well, but my grandfather never exercised a day in his life and lived to be 95."

Yeah, yeah, and he smoked and drank whiskey and had sausage and gravy every morning. And he died when his parachute failed to deploy.

If it's true, he was a rare combination of lucky and blessed. He also spent his earlier years in physical labor.

We are discovering that our activity level in our 20s and 30s impacts our overall health in our senior years. When our grandparents were that age, most of the jobs involved hard work and physically demanding conditions.

Today's generation of 20- and 30-somethings doesn't have the benefit of that but instead lead largely sedentary lives. Jobs today are much more likely to involve sitting at a computer than lifting heavy objects.

And the net result is a generation of obese adults the likes of which we have never seen. Right now, an amazing 40 percent of men and women in that demographic are obese.

I'm not talking about needing to lose 10 or 20. I'm talking about obese to the level that is or will be affecting their health.

At least 25 percent of the adult population in this country (and higher in the state of Tennessee) is morbidly obese. So fat that they won't live longer than their parents. And their children will definitely not.

Think about that one for a minute. Our children will not live as long as their parents, maybe not even as long as their grandparents. They will have more strokes, more heart attacks, more health problems. More diabetes. High blood pressure at a younger age. Heart attacks much younger.

Grandpa may have won at Russian Roulette when he was around, eating whatever he wanted and living an unhealthy lifestyle, but will you win that game in your time? Don't bet on it.

Joe Black, PT, DPT, SCS, ATC is a physical therapist and athletic trainer at Total Rehabilitation and is Manager of Outpatient Rehabilitation for Blount Memorial Hospital. Write to him at joeblackdpt@gmail.com