I usually leave the activity talk on this blog up to Dr. Dan, however lately I have had a lot of questions and discussion regarding activity with my patients that I thought I’d discuss a little bit on here as well. As many of you know, it’s hard to tackle wellness with just diet or just activity, thus to be most successful you really need to work on both! Often times, people will tell me that they are super busy during the day and their job requires them to be on their feet so that counts as exercise. Having a job where you’re on your feet is better than a desk job as we naturally burn more calories standing than sitting, however that doesn’t necessarily mean it counts as moderate activity.
At least 150 minutes of moderate activity is recommended each week. We recommend it by week as it can be spread throughout your days (example 30 min Monday, 40 min Tuesday, 60 min Wednesday, etc)…and it just has to be 10 minutes at a time! Moderate activity has been shown to be beneficial for our cardiovascular health as well as aiding in disease prevention and weight management. The difference between moderate activity and your daily chores and work duties is that moderate activity gets your heart rate up high enough to result in these benefits. You can certainly check your heart rate and figure out your range, however the easiest way to determine you are reaching that moderate level is by using the talk test. Moderate activity involves getting your heart rate up high enough that you can talk (in between breaths), but you are unable to sing. If you are able to sing and talk as you normally would, then your heart rate is not at that moderate level.
Here are some examples of moderate activity:
- Gardening for 30-45 minutes
- Shoveling snow for 15 minutes
- Stair walking for 15 minutes
- Washing windows and floors for 45-60 minutes
- Walking 2 miles in 30 minutes (1 mile in 15 minutes)
- Dancing fast (social dancing) for 30 minutes
- Swimming laps for 20 minutes
- Jumping rope for 15 minutes
Just remember that every bit counts so if you are only able to do little bits of activity throughout your day, that’s better than nothing! The key is to keep moving!!
-Kelsey
