I am off the couch, now what?

Ok, I am off the couch. I am washing the car, mowing the lawn, maybe even pulling a few weeds, do these activities count towards my physical activity goals? What about evening strolls around the civic center? Yes, yes, and yes. All of these activities promote calory burning activity, muscle use, and heart rate increases.


You can be active throughout the day and give yourself a pat on the back. All activities have a health benefit! A church friend mentioned to me the other day, "I just feel better the more I walk, even my knee that has had surgery and my arthritic hips feel better too.". She enjoys the opportunity to walk on the trips that she takes, but she also uses a pedometer to track her activity level when she is home and maybe not as active. Utilizing a pedometer is a great and inexpensive way to track how active you are when just doing normal activities. A pedometer is a little device you put on the waist of your pants and it tracks how many steps you take, which then can be converted into calories or miles.

This can be a great way to increase activity be tracking it through the day and all these steps can be calculated into calories burned. According to David Bassett, Professor of Exercise Science at University of Tennessee-Knoxville, the average American take 5,000 steps per day. He contrasts this to an Amish community that walked greater than 10,000 steps on Sunday, the day of rest, and greater that 17,000 steps on regular weekdays. The Amish show a dramatically lower prevelance of heart conditions, diabetes, obesity, and other medical conditions. So the Amish are great examples of how regular activity can improve health and that you do not necessarily need a gym, a Chuck Norris or Dennis Austin workout, although these are fine, to be actively healthy.

Another aspect to the Amish is that their diets do not include drinks high in sugar like soda and foods high in saturated fat like French fries.

So is there reason to have a regular exercise regime to increase heart rate for 30 minutes even if I get 10,000 steps a day. 10,000 steps is a great goal, but yes, consulting with your primary care physician and cardiologist about regular exercise is important too.

Have you ever wondered why we always hear about 30 minutes of continuous exercise? This is where we get the biggest benefits for improving the condition of our heart. For the first 20 minutes of heart pumping exercise, our body burns quick fuel like sugar and it is not until after 20 minutes that our body begins to burn fat.

So my recommendation is to get active, with or without a regular routine. Track your daily activity with a pedometer, available for less than 10 dollars at Wal-Mart, and embark on a regular exercise routine to increase your heart rate.

Over the weekend there was an advertisement for River Park Hospital's new cardiac rehab department. For those with recent or significant history of cardiac issues, the Cardiac Rehab Department may be a great resource for education and a safe place to start.

Zach Sutton, DPT, MS, OCS