We all know that fitness and movement is important.

For some of us, that means setting time to get to the gym each week, or scheduling time for bike rides or runs. Some of us get our activity in through our daily lives and work… literally running after kids, or through manual labor jobs.

Regardless of how you actually get your movement in, how much do we need each week to decrease our risk of mortality (which, in this example, includes all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, and non-cardiovascular disease)?

A recent study, titled “Long-Term Leisure-Time Physical Activity Intensity and All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality: A Prospective Cohort of US Adults” tracked 100,000+ adults over the course of 30 years to gather information about death rates, causes, connections to smoking and drinking, and their activity levels and came to this conclusion:

Performing 150-300 minutes/week of vigorous physical activity (VPA) OR 300-600 minutes/week of moderate physical activity (MPA), or a combination thereof, led to decreased mortality rates across the board.

The interesting thing was that doing more physical activity than either of these sets of minutes DID NOT further decrease risk of mortality.

Cool… what does this mean?

Well, on the one hand, figuring out how to get those minutes in is critical (examples of how to do so below) AND that we don’t just have to keep figuring out how to work out more and more over time, because that doesn’t necessarily help us any further.

I imagine it also goes without saying that this study found that the higher incidences of drinking and smoking did not help rates of all-cause mortality or cardiovascular diseases.

In case it is helpful to see this plotted out, here’s a set of graphs from the study:

Things that struck me from the graphs:

The high amount of people who do little to no physical activity at all!
The very clear shifts at the 150/300 minute mark on all three of the mortality graphs.
The slight shift upward on the cardiovascular disease mortality graph as vigorous physical activity time increases to very high levels!
The fact that moderate physical activity is just about as effective as vigorous activity in terms of decreasing mortality… indicating that you don’t have to work at near 100% efforts to get these results! To this point, figuring out what kind of movement works for you and that you enjoy is critical… it doesn’t have to be any one thing!

Okay, so now, what could this look like in real life??

Example 1, over the course of the week:

3 x 15 minute higher intensity workouts with different strength elements (45 mins VPA)

2 x 20 minute strength workouts (40 mins MPA or VPA)

3 x 30 minute brisk walks (90 mins MPA)

1 hour house cleaning (mopping, vacuuming, folding laundry, etc) (60 mins MPA)

TOTAL: ~85 mins VPA + 150 mins MPA

Example 2, over the course of the week:

5 x 30 minute Peloton rides (150 mins VPA)

Example 3, over the course of the week:

1 x 60 minute hike

1 x 60 minute swim

1 x 60 minute bike ride

1 x 60 minute walk

1 hour house cleaning (mopping, vacuuming, folding laundry, etc) (60 mins MPA)

TOTAL: 300 minutes MPA (maybe some VPA thrown in depending on difficulty of these activities)

Example 4, over the course of the week:

5 x 1 hour Crossfit Classes (which likely include approx 30 mins VPA each including warmup, workouts, strength training, etc)

TOTAL: 150 minute VPA

You get the idea… also work nothing: these examples are my interpretation of vigorous and moderate physical activity. Certainly what counts as V vs. M might be different for each person… I am merely giving examples of how we can potentially reach these goals and help ourselves live longer! These also don’t necessarily take into account other daily activities that can trigger our heart rates.

So, when you stop and take a look at your activity levels, how close or how far are you from these 150 mins VPA/300 mins MPA goals? If you’re not there yet, for the sake of decreasing your risk of early mortality, it’s worth looking at how you can get closer to these targets!

What do you think of this data?? Helpful? Scary? Comforting? Let me know your thoughts in the comments or send me an email at sara@nutritionforlifeproject.com!

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As always, thanks for reading!
xoxo,
Sara

The Nutrition For Life Project Blog

We know fitness is important, but how much do…