Weekly activity
Checks your week against the exercise guidelines, and what that level meant for death rates.
What you'll need
- Add up the minutes of moderate activity in a usual week: brisk walking, easy cycling, anything that makes you breathe harder but still lets you talk.
- Add up the minutes of vigorous activity: running, hard cycling, anything that leaves you too out of breath to say more than a few words.
- Count the days you do muscle-strengthening work, such as weights or push-ups.
Your result
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What the research found
The guidelines ask for at least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, or 75 vigorous, plus muscle strengthening twice a week. Compared with people who did no leisure exercise, death rates were 20% lower for people doing some but less than the minimum, 31% lower at one to two times the minimum, 37% lower at two to three times, and 39% lower at three to five times. Doing ten times the minimum showed no harm.
Studied in: 661,137 adults in six long-running studies in the US and Europe.
- Arem H et al. Leisure time physical activity and mortality: a detailed pooled analysis of the dose-response relationship. JAMA Intern Med. 2015;175(6):959-67. PubMed