Should You Workout 7 Days A Week?
Hi Byte Wellness Fam!
How’re you doing 1 week into Daylight Saving Time? Hopefully, the 1-hour shift didn’t shake up your circadian rhythm too much. If you find yourself feeling more tired than usual in the morning, make sure you’ve checked all of your sleep hygiene boxes like we discussed in on of our Self-Love Letters from last month.
If you’ve ever wondered: why should you exercise or do you really need to workout 7 days a week, this Self-love letter is for you. In the #ByteWellnessWednesday video our Daily Wellness Text Chat members got this week, we took deep dive into those questions. I’ll outline some of our conclusions here.
Farther down, we define vigorous activity. We talk about the benefits of vigorous activity vs. more moderate activity. And, we talk about how to replace moderate activity with vigorous activity to get the best result from your gym time.
Before we get into all that, let’s talk about our discussion questions. They were hot topics on our Daily Wellness Text Chat…which you can join by texting TEXT to 1(224)302-5224 or click here
This Week’s Discussion Questions:
What are some of your biggest barriers to being active everyday?
When is the last time you overcame those barriers? How did you do it?
When you think about barriers to activity, think about the things that keep you from moving and standing more.
There are the intrinsic barriers- the things that have to do with YOU. Maybe you’re dealing with knee pain that makes it hard to stand, or depression that keeps you from wanting to move..
Then, there are the extrinsic barriers- the things that exist OUTSIDE of you. Maybe you’ve got tons of responsibility at work or at home that eats into the time and energy you’d like to spend exercising. Or, maybe your neighborhood doesn’t have so many safe places to exercise.
Okay, now we start problem-solving! Talk with your friends and family (and whoever else is in your support squad). See what sort of activity barriers they’re dealing with and what type of progress they’re making. You might be surprised what you can learn from their experiences and your past ones.
Why should you exercise?
“Why should you exercise”, you ask… "Why even bother?”. Simple. Countless research studies have shown that regular physical activity helps us live longer, healthier lives. Even the most basic version of activity (standing instead of sitting for most of the day) can cut our chances of developing type 2 diabetes in half and cut our risk of heart disease by nearly half!
We tend to think of activity as just another word for exercise. But, exercise is actually only one of types of physical activity. The other type of physical activity is what we call background activity.
Background activity is all the moving you do in your everyday life that isn’t meant to be a workout and doesn’t make you breathe too heavily:
Standing and walking around your home or job is background activity
Doing yard work is background activity
Mopping your floors and dusting your ceilings is background activity
Riding a bike comfortably as you complete errands is background activity
Light dancing with or without a partner is background activity
On the other hand, exercise is meant to stress your muscles and or your heart/lungs. You’re doing exercise if your muscles feel very tired and you’re breathing more heavily than you usually would in background activity.
Some common exercises:
Conditioning exercises
Dance-aerobics
Weight lifting is an example of anaerobic exercise
Your average indoors cardio workout (think stair climber or treadmill)
Very brisk walking in your neighborhood
Exercises that strengthen and stretch like yoga or pilates (think the hundreds workout)
Jump rope workout
Okay, we can break exercise into 2 different categories: moderate-intensity or vigorous-intensity. Use the sing/talk test (in the pic above) to judge whether your exercise is moderate or vigorous in intensity.
Even though exercise regimens are generally thought of as pretty benign, some people should not start a vigorous-intensity exercise program before talking with their doctor to stratify their risk for a heart attack. People who fall into this category are those who have increased risk of heart disease (based on family history or personal factors). Your doctor will decide whether you need a full heart check-up (also known as a cardiac evaluation) before increasing your exercise intensity to “vigorous” levels. Your evaluation could involve an EKG, a stress test, or a more invasive angiogram.
Do you really need to workout 7 days a week?
With so many ways to be active, do you really need to workout 7 days a week? Not necessarily.
The CDC has posted these Physical Activity recommendations for adults who want to prevent weight gain and chronic diseases:
at least 75 minutes per week of vigorous activity
OR at least 150 minutes per week of moderate activity
AND as much background activity as possible!
Organizations like the Obesity Medicine Association (OMA) double those exercise times for people who are working to lose weight or prevent weight re-gain and people managing chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease.
The OMA recommends:
at least 150 minutes per week of vigorous activity
OR at least 300 minutes per week of moderate activity
AND at least 2 days of resistance activity (like weight lifting)
AND as much background activity as possible!
Look. In addition to meeting your exercise recommendations for the week, it’s a good idea to get lots of background physical activity. And studies show that people managing specific health risks (like pre-menopausal breast cancer or overweight/obesity) benefit from logging more minutes of exercise every week. But, according to the CDC, how you divide your weekly dose of exercise across each day is really up to you.
Hitting 300 minutes of moderate activity every week could be divided into 5 1-hour workout sessions each week, or 10 30-minute sessions each week (two daily workouts form Monday through Friday).
Keep in mind, you can cut gym time or cardio time in half by shifting your moderate-intensity exercises up to vigorous-intensity exercises. Suddenly 5 1-hour moderate-intensity workout sessions each week turns into 2.5 1-hour vigorous-intensity workout sessions each week. You’ll be breathing more heavily during the workouts…but you’ll get nearly 3 hours of your time back! Sounds like a fair trade to me.
*Remember, these conversations are meant to educate you on how your habits can affect your health. What’s written here can not be used as a substitute for medical care and should not supersede the advice you’ve gotten from a healthcare provider.
Leave a comment or text back to let me know how you plan to break up your exercise time throughout the week AND one way you can get more background activity in everyday.
Talk next week.
Happy Healthy Living
Dr. Wuse