How much exercise do you actually need to stay healthy? With the new year and new goals to accomplish, it is important to know physical limitations when setting physical goals. 

There is a difference between being healthy and being fit, and it is more important to focus on being healthy, as fitness is a result of an active lifestyle. The pursuit of being fit can lead to over exercising if not done properly, which can negatively affect all aspects of one’s health.

The average adult should participate in cardiovascular exercise about “three times a week for about 30 minutes or so,” said Warren Franke, kinesiology professor. “Another way to think of it is you want to get anywhere from 100 to 150 minutes a week of exercise.”

To better measure the length of time you should exercise for, Franke suggests to rank yourself on an intensity scale from 1 to 10, while you’re exercising, with 1 being the lowest level of intensity and 10 being the highest. If you’re working out at an intensity level of 7 to 8, this is considered more vigorous exercise and can therefore be done for less time — closer to 100 minutes per week. If you’re working out at an intensity level of 5 to 6, which is considered more moderate exercise, this can be done for close to 150 minutes per week.

“It’s important to get a little bit of some kind of resisted exercise, some type of cardiovascular exercise and try to be well-rounded,” Franke said. “Fitness is more than just cardiovascular fitness.”

According to a morning edition radiocast by NPR, exercise is beneficial because it improves your cardiovascular health, lowers blood pressure and even lowers metabolism. But researchers are beginning to see that working out regularly may not be enough. Regular exercise may not counteract the effects of sitting all day long, which comes to prove your time spent outside of the gym is just as important as your time inside the gym.  

“What matters is your body’s moving,” Franke said. “When people think of exercise, they think I got to go to State. I got to go to Beyer. I got to work out. And that’s fine. But from the health perspective, you just need to move. And so, time spent walking from class to class counts. You could make that moderate intensity exercise by walking fast.”  

Another way to help stay active outside of the gym is to be more efficient with everyday things in general. Franke used the example of when one needs to use the bathroom while on the third floor of a building. Walk down the stairs to the first floor bathroom, instead of walking just a few doors down the hall.

“These little snippets of exercise, they add up and they help. If someone doesn’t think of themselves as an exerciser, just be active,” Franke said. “Being active will improve your health and it may improve your fitness, too, depending on where you are to begin with and your level of conditioning. But at the end of the day, what’s more important? Being healthy or being fit?”

So with these guidelines set in place and so many opportunities to be active throughout the day, many students still believe that it takes hours in the gym to be healthy and see the success they want to see.

“[I work out so often because of] body image. I’m trying to change it for the better,” said Colin Boesch, junior in mechanical engineering, who admits he works out six to eight times a week for an hour each time. “Since freshman year, I’ve lost 30 pounds. And I’ve gained back about five to 10 pounds of muscle so far this year. So my main goal in the matter, is body image.”

But with so much exercise, there is a point when your body will no longer take it and the exercise you are doing will turn counterproductive. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to warning signs of this before a burnout occurs. These warnings include mental fatigue and having a higher resting heart rate.

Finally, your body will begin to retaliate in ways other than physically with joint injuries and pains.

“Depending upon how much you’re training, it can affect your immune system,” Franke said. “So you’re more prone to sickness, you become immunosuppressed. Then, there are the mental aspects you have to worry about [with] people developing an exercise disorder, which is the exercise version of an eating disorder. It affects their mental health to be overly fixated on their exercise.”

So what is the best way for someone to avoid over exercising? Franke said that the biggest thing is simply to think of your goals and listen to and think of your body in the process.   

“If your goal is fitness, 30 minutes three to five times a week, 100 to 150 minutes per week is all it takes,” Franke said. “If you’re doing more, it’s not going to improve your fitness. You may burn more calories, but you’ll more likely get tired of it [and] burned out a lot, it may make you more stressed. Just recognize that 30 minutes is all it takes, and it doesn’t have to be 30 minutes continuously.”

If one has a specific goal in mind, but is not sure how to achieve it, talk to someone with expertise, such as personal trainers available through recreational services or even kinesiology majors.

“We do have clients that come in [to ask about their goals],” said Katy Wearmouth, senior in dietetics and personal trainer through recreational services. “Some people come in and we do an assessment of their posture. We do an assessment of their physical fitness, their muscular strength [and] their muscular endurance. We evaluate how they’re able to react to those kinds of tests, and from there, we can kind of assess what we can progress in [and] what we can make goals for.”

The next step is to train toward these goals. Franke recommends making SMART goals, goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound, and to keep a log of your workouts.

“Don’t say, ‘I’m going to work out this week.’ That’s such a vague goal. It’s hard to wrap your head around it. So [be] specific and measurable. I’m going to go to the rec center two times this week. Achievable, can you do that? Is it realistic with your schedule? Is it time-bound? That way, it helps you focus and fine tune, and just shoot for it.”

So as the semester is starting to wind up, it is important to keep in mind all aspects of your life. Besides just physical health, Franke says to take into consideration your mental, spiritual, and emotional health as well.