Exercise and Health: Is 30 minutes a day enough?

If you don't get any exercise at all, then 30 minutes a day can help with your health and level of fitness. But if you eat too much for your body's needs and sit down for the remaining 23 hours and 30 minutes you will find yourself putting on weight at a rapid rate.

But who sits down for that amount of time?

Well if you add it up, we do "sit" down for a very long time every day.

• How many hours do you sleep at night?
• Do you drive to work / catch a bus / train / ferry? How long does it take you?
• How far is it from your car / bus stop to work?
• Do you sit down at work? How many hours a day?
• Do you get home and sit down and eat your dinner in front of the television?

Now after you've answered all those questions, honestly - how much exercise do you get?

You can get incidental exercise - walking to and from the refridgerator, shops, up the stairs, to and from the car etc etc - but it's not going to be sufficient to help you reduce your waist line, get fit or improve your health if you fail to take some other forms of "real" exercise - by "real" we mean it raises your heart rate to a point that allows fat burning to take place, or if you continue to over consume.

Which is something to think about if you do want to improve your health through exercise.