Exercise is an important component of maintaining good health. Moving your body triggers a whole host of positive benefits including reducing your blood pressure, lowering your blood sugar, improving your mental capacity and relieving stress. And of course, it can help you lose weight, too.
As mentioned in my previous post, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends that adults do 150 minutes of moderate exercise every week, ideally with a mix of both aerobic and strength training.
150 minutes a week can sound daunting and unattainable when you’re trying to balance work, family, chores, and other responsibilities and barely have time for yourself in a day.
However, you can make the time for exercise if you want to make it a priority. And it’s quite possible that you are already close to, if not exceeding, the weekly 150 minutes.
How?
By walking.
We all need to get around in our daily lives and that involves some level of walking. If you divide those 150 exercise minutes into the 7 days of a week, the recommended amount of exercise per day is only 21.5 minutes. Much more doable, right?
If you convert those 21.5 minutes into steps, that’s roughly 1,200 steps a day, assuming you’re moving at a slower pace throughout the day.
If you have a Fitbit, Apple Watch, or wear a pedometer, you can easily track your steps along with a plethora of other health metrics to see if you’re hitting the 150 minute-a-week goal.
But even without such health gear, you can track your steps. The vast majority of us own smartphones and download apps, and fortunately, there are apps to track your steps. iPhones come equipped with Apple’s Health app, and there are several step-tracking app options for Android phones. The trick is that you need to be carrying your phone in order for steps to be tracked. This shouldn’t be difficult, though, because most of carry our phones with us almost everywhere we go!
Sure, it would be great to get your heart rate up to work out moderately during one dedicated time period. But that’s a goal you can set for yourself.
What’s most important is that you're moving at all. Keep it up!