Apparently only 3% of Americans (1) eat five servings of fruit/veg a day (2) don't smoke (3) exercise regularly (4) are at a healthy weight. While the first two of these are quantified, the last two are not. What does "regular exercise" mean? what is a "healthy weight"?
What is "regular exercise"?
Whether the study above meant this level, healthy exercise has been studied to mean 5 hours a week. That's a minimum, regardless of body type. This is based on studies at the University of Wyoming and the University of Pittsburgh for people to be "happy" with their bodies: 270-300 mins per week to induce effective weight loss, and for good physical conditioning and health at least 5 hours of physical activity per week ; at least 50% of the activity (2.5+ hours) coming from high intensity work.
It's rare to be able to jump into that level of activity, and that mayn't even be healthy for people who have been more or less sedentary. The recommendation here is to start with three times a week for 30 minutes of activity. There have been some fantastic results in the thirty minutes, three times a week zone (when combined with appropriate nutrition) - see Tracy Reikind's story (pdf download). The main thing is to find activity you enjoy and VARY the intensity of the sessions throughout the week, too, and build up to getting the time up.
Variety is the spice of life: mixing up stuff to help your central nervous system recover from the week or from other workouts is also great. Yoga is super, and there are a ton of other approaches Z-health to Super Joints that give your body recuperative work.
What is a Healthy Weight?
As in figuring out what "regular exercise" means, there are some well known markers for healthy weights. Different measures of healthy weights take into account gender, age and height. For instance, the Body Mass Index is a measure of body fat (not the same as measuring for actual body fat %) which is a calculation of height and weight and is a cross gender measure. This measure is frequently used to calculate risks associated with being under weight (below 18.5 BMI) or overweight (25-29.9) or obese (BMI of greater than 30).
The simple waist measure is also used to show whether one's weight is healthy or not: a waist on a gal of over 35 or a guy over 40 inches has a substantially greater risk of obesity related disease. Combined with other risk factors like smoking, high blood pressure or high LDL-cholesterol, unhealthy weight or inactivity means increased risk.
As said before, my favorite measure of body fat is the Navy Circumference method: it's gender specific and takes into account measures you can get with only a tape measure. Add in body weight and one can then calculate lean muscle mass as well (more is better). The approach has been shown to be about as effective for body fat measuring as doing the full body immersion in a water tank. This same argument suggests that the measure is better than skinfold as more accurate and easier to learn. Not clear yet that that is the case. But that level of testing is for the truly intrigued (like me). If you want to get intrigued with the wide variety of ways you can measure your BF% and progress, sign up (free) to the PN forum and and search for Body Composition Measurement Guide - there's a bunch of links, but the first one is on assessing vs guessing.
The main take away here: take a look at the tables like these associated with these measures for understanding where healthy fat% ranges are.
Underweight BMI less than 18.5
Normal weight BMI 18.5 to 24.9
Overweight BMI 25 to 29.9
Obese BMI 30 or greater
Women Men
Essential fat 10-12% 2-4%
Athletes 14-20% 6-13%
Fitness 21-24% 14-17%
Acceptable 25-31% 18-25%
Obese 32% or more 26% or more
It's also important to note that as you build more lean muscle, your measures may start to come a little unstuck from these tables if you look at BMI alone. As the above page explains: someone with a lot of lean muscle mass may get a BMI measure that looks like they have high body fat (That's again why the navy circumference is a more reliable measure. Check it out, it's fast and easy) There's an easy test of BMI against fat if you are muscular: if your BMI is 25 or greater, and your Waist-to-Height ratio is less than 0.5 and your Percent Body Fat is in the "athlete" or "fitness" category, you are probably muscular and not fat.
So, there's a couple ways to think about regular exercise and healthy weight.
With that in mind, how would you do on that American fitness quiz? 1,2,3 or 4 out of 4? if you're not at 4 out of 4, what would help make that possible for you? what information do you need that you don't have?
