How much exactly is enough, and how much is too much? To find out if you get the exercise that you need, you first need to identify your motives. Why are you exercising in the first place?
Do you want to lose weight – and if you do – how many pounds do you want to lose? How quickly do you want to shed these pounds?
Have you achieved your ideal weight and are you simply trying to keep the pounds from piling back?
Read on to find out if you’re working out enough.
Exercising for fitness
Exercise is important to keep yourself healthy and prevent disease such as stroke and heart disease. If you are working out for this sole purpose, then you only need to do at least 150 minutes of moderate or at least 80 to 100 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise each week.
This means at least 20 to 30 minutes each week if you decide to work out five times a day.
Thirty minutes of moderate intensity or 20 minutes of vigorous activity burns around 90-180 calories.
Some examples of moderate intensity exercise include:
- Hiking
- Walking the dog
- Yard Work
- General house work
- Dancing
- Golf
- Biking or Walking
- General weight lifting
- Hatha Yoga
How do you know that you are doing the activity with enough intensity? The here idea is to get your heart rate up a little bit and get yourself to breathe a bit faster. Thus, you should feel an increase in your heart rate, and your breathing should be faster.
If you are exercising with a friend, you should still be able to carry a conversation with him or her – although you may not want to and concentrate on your training instead.
Vigorous exercise, on the other hand, includes the following activities:
- Jogging
- Running
- High Intensity Training
- Swimming laps
- Fast biking or cycling (or cycling up hills)
- Sports like basketball, soccer and Frisbee.
Vigorous exercise causes your heart rate to greatly increase, causing you to breathe fast and hard. You may have a hard time talking and may need to pause for a few breaths while carrying a conversation.
To lose weight
To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume.
This is a bit tricky to explain (and understand), but what you need to remember is that your body has to burn 3500 calories to lose just one pound. You can exercise or cut back on your food intake, to create this deficit of calories.
Here are some ways you can lose weight:
- Let us say you burn 150 calories each day with your thirty minute exercise. Doing so would require you 24 sessions before you lose one pound. This is provided, of course, that you follow the recommended caloric intake for your age, weight and height.
- If you decide to increase your exercise time or intensity and burn 300 calories each day, then you would reduce the time needed to burn one pound by half. Again, you would need to stick to the recommended caloric intake for your age, weight and height.
- If you plan to reduce your daily intake by 300 calories and burn another 150 daily, then you would only need eight days to lose one pound.
- If you plan to reduce your daily intake by 300 calories and burn another 300 daily, then you would only need five to six days to lose one pound.
That said, how much exercise you need on a weekly or daily basis greatly depends on how quick you want to lose weight and how much you eat.
If you are not in a rush and are following a regular and balanced diet, then your 150 minutes of moderate activity each week is absolutely fine. If you plan to lose weight faster, then you should increase your intensity to vigorous, or stick to moderately-intense but increase your workout time.
If you need quicker results, then you would need to cut your food portions as well.
What about the muscles?
Aside from aerobic exercises, you also need to focus on your muscles. Strengthening your muscles increases your muscle mass, which in turn speeds up your metabolic process, helping you burn calories even faster. It is recommended that you focus on your muscles for two days a week.
Muscle toning and strengthening exercises are anaerobic, which do not lead to a substantial amount fo weight loss. Hence, they should always be partnered with aerobic activity as well.
There are many ways for you to strengthen your muscles, and you can do it at home or at the gym. Some examples include:
- Weight lifting
- Using resistance bands
- Using the body weight for resistance (sit-ups, push ups, lunges)
- Gardening
- Intense forms of yoga and Pilates
Mind the sweat
One last thing that you should be on the lookout for while exercising is your sweat. This indicates that your body’s metabolism is increasing, and the body produces sweat to keep your body cool.
If you are not sweating, you may either be inside a very cold room – or you may be dehydrated. If you are fully hydrated, in cool room and still not sweating, then you may need to exert more effort for your exercise.
Patience is always important
While you may want to increase and amp up your routine, experts suggest that you start slow. If you are doing fifty minutes of exercise every week now, do not work your way up to 200 minutes the following week. Ease your body by slowly increasing workout time weekly as you go along.
The same goes for vigorous exercises. If you are currently doing things at a slower pace, slowly replace some activities with moderate ones, and then over time, ease in some vigorous exercises on random days. Do this for several weeks until you can finally replace all workouts with vigorous ones.
What about you, how many minutes do you exercise each week? Do you feel that you’re working out enough or do you need to do more?
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