Exercise: How Much is Enough? :

You've probably heard that 30 minutes of daily exercise helps improve your health. Then again, maybe you’ve read that 60 minutes of exercise on most days of the week is necessary.

Confused? You're not alone. So how much exercise is enough?

In September of 2002, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued a report recommending that adults spend at least 60 minutes doing moderately intense physical activity every day of the week.

This more than doubles the minimum goal of 30 minutes of daily physical exercise recommended by the U.S. Surgeon General in 1996. The 1996 recommendation was based on research that showed 30 minutes of physical activity most days of the week could reduce the risk of many diseases, including diabetes, heart disease and colon cancer.

The IOM recommendation stems from evidence showing that 30 minutes of daily activity may not be enough to allow one to maintain an ideal weight and achieve optimal health benefits. The latest thinking takes into consideration that people in the United States are consuming more calories and getting fatter. As you can see, the exercise recommendation of an hour per day attempts to offset the excesses calorie intake.

One of the problems I have with "black-and-white" recommendations for exercise is that most of the recommendations view people as robots. Work demands, family responsibilities and overall interest in exercise are never taken into consideration.

From my experience, if you paid everyone to work out for 60 minutes every day of the week, many people still wouldn’t comply.

If I tell you to exercise moderately for 60 minutes seven days per week, but based on your hectic work schedule, you lack consistency -- then what I have accomplished?

Let's get real here -- how many people can really devote 60 minutes to exercise each and every day?

If I recommend exercising three to four days per week for 25 minutes based on your busy schedule (and yes, a power walk at lunch does count), then you’ll be doing less than the recommendation by the IOM but accomplishing more just by being consistent.

If I also suggest that you eliminate about 200 useless calories per day, won’t that also help?

As Richard N Fogoros, M.D writes, “More than 40 studies in the scientific literature document that cardiac risk can be reduced by 30 percent to 50 percent by regular, moderate exercise -- exercise averaging far less than one hour per day. Indeed, on September 5, the very day the Institute of Medicine report was released, yet another major article appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that, among 73,743 women followed for a number of years, those who reported walking at least 2.5 hours a week (roughly 20 minutes a day) reduced their cardiovascular risk by 30 percent. Women who exercised more than this reduced their risk even more, but the point is that 20 minutes a day was enough to gain a substantial improvement in cardiac risk. This study is consistent with a large body of medical literature.”

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