This video highlights the somewhat unsurprising fact that most Americans don’t know how much exercise per week the medical community recommends that they get.
Let’s take a look at some of the recent research on the right amount of exercise per week, as well as a few ways to keep track of how much you exercise.
Why Exercise?
The benefits of exercise are many and well-documented. From cutting your risk of heart attack in half to losing weight to improving your mood, the results of exercise drastically outweigh the potential comfort of sitting on the couch. Any exercise at all is better than none, of course, but these benefits tend to be more pronounced after certain amounts of exercise.
Weekly Exercise Recommendations
Like many aspects of health and fitness, the consensus on how much exercise people need and what type of exercise it should be is not really much of a consensus at all. Studies have found that as few as twelve minutes of exercise per day might be enough to make progress for people who are overweight, for example, while the recommendation of most doctors is roughly half an hour per day, every day (or at least five days per week).