Trump thinks exercise is bad for you, depletes limited energy

President Trump apparently has a dim view of exercise, seeing it as a drain on the human body’s limited energy.

“Other than golf, he considers exercise misguided, arguing that a person, like a battery, is born with a finite amount of energy,” wrote Evan Osnos of the New Yorker in a profile of Trump in the magazine’s May 8 edition.

Osnos is not the first writer to reference Trump’s battery theory of human energy. The Washington Post’s Mike Kranisch and Marc Fisher elaborated on Trump’s hypothesis in their biography, “Trump Revealed,” from August 2016.

“After college, after Trump mostly gave up his personal athletic interests, he came to view time spent playing sports as time wasted. Trump believed the human body was like a battery, with a finite amount of energy, which exercise only depleted. So he didn’t work out. When he learned that John O’Donnell, one of his top casino executives, was training for an Ironman triathlon, he admonished him, ‘You are going to die young because of this.’”

It’s hard to say how Trump’s minimal exercise routine is treating him because he has not released his health records. Instead, the former reality TV show star shared a letter summarizing the results of a recent physical from his longtime physician, Harold Bornstein, on “The Dr. Oz Show.”

Bornstein’s office declined a request for comment from Yahoo News.

The Washington Post reports that Trump is overweight; he is nearly obese at a minimum and possibly quite obese.

In this March 6, 2016, file photo, Donald Trump drives himself around a golf course to watch the final round of the Cadillac Championship golf tournament in Doral, Fla. (Photo: Luis Alvarez/AP)
In this March 6, 2016, file photo, Donald Trump drives himself around a golf course to watch the final round of the Cadillac Championship golf tournament in Doral, Fla. (Photo: Luis Alvarez/AP)

Trump also put down exercise while campaigning in September 2015. According to a profile for the New York Times, Trump explained that he thinks exercise might actually do more harm than good.

“‘All my friends who work out all the time — they’re going for knee replacements, hip replacements — they’re a disaster,’ he said. He exerts himself fully by standing in front of an audience for an hour, as he just did. ‘That’s exercise.’”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the many health benefits of exercise outweigh the risks of injury, and aerobic activity of moderate intensity is safe for most people.

The medical community agrees that physical activity helps to maintain a healthy weight, strengthens bones and muscles, improves mental health, increases chances of living longer and reduces the risk of a variety of ailments, including cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and some forms of cancer.

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