Is your workout too wimpy?
You have heard it a million times: a balanced diet and staying active are keys to healthy living. When it comes to what you eat, you can look at nutrition labels. However, when it comes to fitness, where do you look to make sure you’re getting the right amount exercise?
Moderate exercise is recommended for a healthy lifestyle, however you may not be aware of what “moderate” actually is. According to a study, published in the journal PLOS One, researchers experimented on the intensities that people feel during their “moderate” workouts.
The objective of the study was to find out if individuals can select light, moderate, and vigorous exercise using descriptions based on the Physical Activity (PA) guidelines provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
About 130 adults were told to walk or jog at what they believed was light, moderate and vigorous efforts. Most people correctly estimated the light effort, but misjudged moderate effort, according to research.
The heart rate ranges for light exercise is 50 to 63 percent, 64 to 76 percent for moderate, and 77 to 93 for vigorous, according to researchers. The participants’ heart rates were recorded before and during exercise.
When people were asked to walk or jog on a treadmill at a pace that they think will provide health benefits, 52 percent of participants walked at what is considered a light pace. Researchers found that only 19 percent of participants actually walked at a moderate pace.
The study concluded that people may not be aware of the intensity of exercise that needs to be done to receive health benefits and discovered that most of participants were not aware of the PA guidelines.
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health enews staff is a group of experienced writers from our Advocate Health Care and Aurora Health Care sites, which also includes freelance or intern writers.
I’ve also heard that fitness machines don’t always accurately predict the calories burned during a workout. This can make it tricky to know how “good” of a workout you actually got.
This encourages me to make sure I step it up a notch at the gym!