If it weren't for my age, I could serve as the poster child for the phrase "creature of habit." For the 27 years that I've written this column, for instance, I've gone about creating it during the school year the same way.

After each school day, I read dozens of articles, print out the promising ones, and then file them in the appropriately labeled folders. Throughout the week, what I've read percolates as I work out, prepare meals, and read the newspaper and novels, which often leads to a few hurried notes, a tentative title, or an opening sentence.By Saturday morning I usually have enough of an idea to write a rough draft.I know I've told a similar story about my writing process before, so why tell it a second time? Because the folder labeled Exercise filled up again, which means once again you'll read about a few of the many reasons for you to become a creature of habit when it comes to exercise.If you're in no particular hurry to meet your maker, for instance, you might be interested in an article published this summer in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology that reviewed 45 years' worth of studies to decide if regular exercise affects the mortality rate.The determination: does it ever.A news release about the study contained the lead researcher's summary of it. Dr. Per Ladenvail from the Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine at Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, explained: "We found that low aerobic capacity was associated with increased rates of death . . . . The effect of aerobic capacity on risk of death was second only to smoking."Similarly, if you're in no particular hurry to stroke out from the high level of stress that comes with your job, you might be interested in work conducted by the Department of Sport, Exercise and Health at the University of Basel in conjunction with the Institute of Stress Medicine, and Sahlgrenska University and published in the U.S. journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise this fall. In short, it concluded that being in good shape protects against the health problems created by work-related stress.That's because being in good shape through regular exercise reduces psychosocial stress, one of the key factors leading to illness-related absences from work. Psychosocial stress, if unabated, leads to depression.If you're in no particular hurry to develop type 2 diabetes, you might be interested in an article published this fall in Diabetologia. While previous research has clearly established exercise as a way to reduce the incidence of type 2 diabetes, this research made an idea I've found to be generally true about exercising for any reason to be particularly true in guarding against this disease.My idea is also the direct quotation co-author Soren Brage offered about the research: "Some physical activity is good, but more is better."For example, the research done at both University College London and the University of Cambridge determined that 150 minutes a week of brisk exercise - moderate walking or bicycle riding, for instance - reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes by 26 percent. But if you exercise briskly for 60 minutes each day, the reduction of risk skyrockets to 40 percent.So why, according to the latest report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, do only 20 percent of U.S. adults exercise enough for it to benefit health?The key, ironically enough, is that those people are just like me, creatures of habit - except their ingrained habits make regular exercise difficult or practically impossible.Or so it seems.Recently, I've spoken to two middle-aged moms and both gave the same explanation for their lack of exercise. Because they drive their children back and forth from soccer practices and games all the time, they don't have time to work out.Yet one of the women told me that the drives to and from practices are so long that she remains at the field and reads in the car until the practice ends.So why couldn't she replace that habit with another? Why couldn't she take a walk during practice time?Or why couldn't she carry a couple of dumbbells in the trunk of the car or the back of the van?And for those of you who may argue that I don't understand the sacrifice that needs to be made when raising children since I have none of my own, I'd like you to think about your long-term commitment to them. Years from now, do you want your sons and daughters to be attending to their children or do you want them attending to you?For those middle-aged and older,"use it or lose it" is especially true if you add "far quicker" to the catchphrase.Exercise regularly and you can increase the time between middle age and the onset of infirmity.