Exercise Minutes per Week

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mychellelynne
mychellelynne Posts: 122 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Good morning,

I get about 500 exercise minutes a week. Mostly from walking but I also do strength training 2x a week. Does this seem ok? I am 6 months post weight loss surgery and just trying to live my best life!

Note: I only count the minutes my Apple watch deems as exercise minutes (elevated heart rate). I do not count just general walking minutes.

Replies

  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,871 Member
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    Yeah, that's fine. 150 minutes per week of light exercise (walking) is the minimum recommendation along with 2x per week of full body resistance training for general health and wellness and a baseline level of fitness. You're doing more than 3x that amount.

    The only thing you might want to consider is throwing in a couple of days of more moderately strenuous cardiovascular exercise along with your walking...so maybe walk most days and then 2-3 days per week do a walk/run interval (C25K type thing) and work up to being able to jog for 30 minutes a few days per week. But this is really just dependent on your personal fitness goals...what you're already doing is plenty fine for general health and well being.

    Also, the jogging thing is just an example...I loath running and don't do it unless something bad is chasing me...I prefer my bike.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,534 Member
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    Yeah it sounds good OP. I'd just suggest if you aren't already, then remember to make it progressive, especially the strength training. You should be pushing hard enough that you're able to gradually increase weight or reps or sets over time. If e.g. you're doing 10 reps of something that you were doing 10 reps of a year ago, and you could actually go 18 reps before failure, then it's doing very little for you.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,584 Member
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    I agree with the above posts from wolfman and Retroguy, but would add this:

    Is this putting you in a position of overall good life balance, i.e., enough time and energy for other things important to you, such as family, job, social life, non-exercise hobbies?

    I'm not trying to get you to reduce exercise, not at all . . . but sometimes we see people adopting routines that throw their life out of a happy balance in pursuit of weight management, and those routines are unlikely to stick long term, realistically.

    It isn't necessarily easy, but finding good overall balance IMO is key to long-term success: Finding a happy way to be that makes exercise energizing, food nourishing and satisfying, family life happy, job productive, other hobbies able to develop us in other ways such as creativity, etc.

    Best wishes!
  • mychellelynne
    mychellelynne Posts: 122 Member
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    Thanks for the replies! I do see a personal trainer for my strength training so I do think it is progressive. I am trying to learn to jog but probably do need to practice jogging more.

    I have no kids so my life is pretty full. I do a lot like hobbies, travel and do enjoy other things besides exercising. I can see where people fall in a rut they cannot keep up with but right now I am ok. I mostly walk home from work each day and that gives me 2 miles. I also walk during lunch about 1 mile. I do FitOn workouts and hike on weekends but its not consuming all my time.

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