Wellness Wednesday – October 8, 2008: The Fed’s Physical Activity Guidelines

Yesterday, the Federal Government issued its first-ever Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. They describe the types and amounts of physical activity that offer substantial health benefits to Americans. The major conclusions noted in the guidelines are as follows:

• Regular physical activity reduces the risk of many adverse health outcomes.
• Some physical activity is better than none.
• For most health outcomes, additional benefits occur as the amount of physical activity increases through higher intensity, greater frequency, and/or longer duration.
• Most health benefits occur with at least 2 hours and 30 minutes (150 minutes) a week of moderate-intensity physical activity, such as brisk walking. Additional benefits occur with more physical activity.
• Episodes of activity that are at least 10 minutes long count toward meeting the Guidelines.
• Both aerobic (endurance) and muscle-strengthening (resistance) physical activity are beneficial.
• Health benefits of physical activity occur for children and adolescents, young and middle-aged adults, older adults, and those in every studied racial and ethnic group.
• Health benefits of physical activity are attainable for people with disabilities.
• The benefits of physical activity outweigh the risks of injury and heart attack.

To read a brief summary of the guidelines, please click here, and for a great set of FAQs related to the guidelines, please click here. To me, the guidelines are must reading, and I strongly encourage all of you to learn more about them, since after all, who does not want to know more about what it takes to be healthy.

At Fitness Together, we want to be your partner in helping you to not only meet these guidelines, but to exceed them. As noted above, additional health benefits do occur with more physical activity beyond the basic guidelines. We have always focused our efforts on both aerobic and strength training activities for our clients, and these guidelines are just further confirmation of the benefits of consistently engaging in a well-designed fitness program.

I would also encourage you to share these guidelines with your parents, children, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and anyone else whose health you care about. The easiest way to do this is to simply forward this email on to those people by using the link at the bottom of this email; they will thank you for thinking of them.

To your health and happiness.