Exercising.
For most healthy adults, the Department of Health and Human Services recommends these exercise guidelines:
- Aerobic activity.Get at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity a week, or a combination of moderate and vigorous activity. The guidelines suggest that you spread out this exercise during the course of a week. Greater amounts of exercise will provide even greater health benefit. But even small amounts of physical activity are helpful. Being active for short periods of time throughout the day can add up to provide health benefit.
- Strength training.Do strength training exercises for all major muscle groups at least two times a week. Aim to do a single set of each exercise, using a weight or resistance level heavy enough to tire your muscles after about 12 to 15 repetitions.
This doesn’t mean you have to start straight away, you can build up the amount of exercise slowly as you gain more time, fitness and hopefully enjoyment. A Small amount of exercise if better than no exercise. Now remember exercise doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go to the gym or for a run, you can get your heartrate up doing every day stuff such as walking, cutting the grass, hoovering, walking up and down stairs carrying the washing. These are all classed as Moderate aerobic exercises, however, you may want to step it up a bit once you are getting more comfortable and feel confident into the Vigorous aerobic exercises which includes body weight exercises, the use of weights, Interval sprints and HIIT training (High Intensity Interval Training) which is basically doing anything which raises your heartrate then resting for a short period before raising it again repeatedly.
Generally you should aim for at least 30 mins of moderate physical activity daily. This might sound a lot to some but you can break the exercise up into chunks of 10 mins or even 5 mins if you have to, this is called snack exercising. While waiting for the kettle to boil, while the adverts come on or even setting alarms on your phone to remind you can make a big difference. If you’re in a desk based job try and get up every now and again, instead of making yourself that big mug of coffee or tea why not get small glasses of water, once you finish one get up walk and get some more, you may annoy some people in the office but it’s a small price to pay for increasing your own health. The more hours you sit, the higher the risk of metabolic problems, reduction in your range of motion and increased risk of cardiovascular problems.
Like I said earlier, this doesn’t mean you have to make a massive lifestyle change right now. Small changes and small progressions to make sure you’re hitting them recommended exercise guidelines is great, this way you’re more likely to stick to them small changes instead of a huge one that is a lot harder to grasp.
One of the best things that I done was getting a smart watch, it reminds me to get moving when I have been seated too long, counts my daily steps and burnt calories, tells me my optimal fat burning heart rate and best thing is I can compete again my family and friends through an app that shows all our data (I’m very competitive if you didn’t know already).
Find something that suits you and that you enjoy.
If you have any further questions on how you can improve your health or increase your exercise I would be more than happy to talk to you so get in touch.
