I just ran across an interesting document from the US Department of Health & Human Services. In it, they discuss physical activity guidelines for Americans. Guess what? As a country we’re fat and lazy, and we don’t get enough exercise.
Types of physical activity
For starters, they define baseline activity as:
…the light-intensity activities of daily life, such as standing, walking slowly, and lifting lightweight objects.
The first recommendation is to increase your baseline activities to help burn more calories, improve bon health, etc. However, if you only do baseline activities then you’re still considered “inactive.”
In contrast, health-enhancing physical activity is defined as:
…activity that, when added to baseline activity, produces health benefits.
They go on to specify that such physical activity includes things such as brisk walking, jumping rope, dancing, lifting weights, doing yoga, etc. In other words, things that most of use would categorize as “exercise.”
Four levels of physical activity
In order to make things a bit more specific, they go on define four different levels of physical activity
Inactive is defined as having no physical activity beyond baseline activities.
Low activity is defined as having moderate-intensity physical activity beyond the baseline activities, but for fewer than 150 minutes (2.5 hours) per week.
Medium activity is defined as having moderate intensity physical activity beyond baseline activities for 150-300 minutes (2.5 to 5 hours) per week. Alternatively, you can have vigorous-intensity physical activity of 75-150 minutes per week.
High activity is defined as having physical activity beyond baseline activities for more than 300 minutes (5 hours) per week.
Low activity is listed as providing “some” health benefits, whereas medium activity provides “substantial” health benefits, and high activity provides “additional” health benefits.
Recommended activity levels
In recent years, the standard recommendation has been for adults to get 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on five or more days per week. This roughly corresponds to the low end of the “medium activity” category, which provides “substantial” health benefits.
The Health & Human Services guidelines affirm this long-standing view, but go on to argue that it’s too restrictive. The reason for this is that existing research doesn’t allow us to say that 30 minutes per day spread across 5 days per week is any better (or worse) than 50 minutes per day spread across 3 days per week.
Thus, the new guidelines simply specify that people should be getting a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week and leave the specifics up to you. Are you getting enough? Most people aren’t.
Source: US Dept of Health & Human Services via GetFitSlowly
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I think I fall under the “High Activity” category…only 1 of the last 5 weeks has fallen under the 5 hour level and that just barely:
2010/02/15 — 2010/02/21: 55.4 Mi 8:50:27 9:35 / Mi
2010/02/08 — 2010/02/14: 47.3 Mi 7:45:29 9:51 / Mi
2010/02/01 — 2010/02/07: 36.9 Mi 4:58:41 8:06 / Mi
2010/01/25 — 2010/01/31: 40.5 Mi 6:46:48 10:03 / Mi
2010/01/18 — 2010/01/24: 148.1 Mi 20:47:14 8:26 / M
I love that I’m in the high activity category!