It’s no wonder that the public is confused about how much exercise is really necessary to maintain a healthy weight and fitness level. Different companies, government bodies and research facilities submit varying conclusions, so how do you know who to believe? Some so-called experts will have you believe that exercising for twenty minutes a day, three days a week, you can maintain an adequate fitness level, but the Department of Health and Human Services strongly disagrees.
Every five years, the government publishes a new set of dietary guidelines that includes the optimum types and levels of exercise. The last set of guidelines was published in 2005 and revealed startling recommendations for most of the public. According to their findings, the optimum exercise routine includes thirty, sixty or ninety minutes of exercise daily.
Obviously, there is a large difference between thirty minutes of exercise and an hour and a half. The reason for the gap is because different people need different amounts of exercise in order to maintain their ideal targeted weight. One person might be able to get away with thirty minutes of exercise without risking weight gain, while another might need ninety minutes consistently in order to avoid the same fate.
Energy imbalance, according to these guidelines, is the number one cause of obesity in America. If you consume more calories than you expend through exercise, the only logical conclusion is that you will gain weight. Metabolism is a small factor in this process that increases as you age, but even if you have a healthy metabolism, you can still suffer from weight gain if you don’t exercise often enough.
The good news is that exercise is cumulative and your exercise routine doesn’t have to involve jogging, a tread mill or a weight machine. Any physical activity that increases your heart rate and respiration is sufficient to ward off the potential to gain weight. The only problem is that we become used to exercising and must then either increase the length of time we exercise or the cardiovascular component of the exercise itself.
For example, let’s say that you exercise thirty minutes each day for three years and you never gain an ounce. By the time that fourth year rolls around, however, it’s going to take more physical activity to increase your heart rate and respiration. At that point, you must change your exercise routine to reflect your increasing fitness level. Some people can ride an exercise bike for ninety minutes and never break a sweat, while for others thirty minutes would leave them breathless.
In order to establish the optimum exercise routine for your weight and fitness level, a little experimentation is in order. Decide what type of exercise you enjoy the most and engage in it for thirty minutes. If possible, take your heart rate and respiration at various intervals during your exercise to determine how much you’ve increased them. Stick with thirty minutes for about two weeks and see if you notice any change in your weight.
If you find that you can’t lose or maintain weight with thirty minutes, increase it to forty-five or sixty. Continue until you notice a change and you’ll have found the ideal exercise routine.
