Rev Your Calorie Burning In To High Gear With The FITT Formula
I’m a big proponent of the 80/20 rule, also known as Pareto’s Principle. I always look for applications of this principle in all aspects of life.
Could it be that 80% of the benefits of exercise come from only 20% of your exercise efforts? Do you really need to slog it out for 1 hour three times a week?
Working from home gives you great flexibility in determining how often and how long you exercise. How best to take advantage of this freedom?
Time
The human body stores about 1 hour’s worth of glycogen (energy source for strenuous physical activity). So, it’s no wonder that most people default to 1-hour workout sessions or less (in my experience).
Working with 60 minutes as our baseline, using the 80/20 rule would stipulate that about 12 minutes of exercise should be sufficient to get the majority of the health benefits.
Once you’ve identified where your maximal gains are located, the next step is to eliminate the wasted time and invest all you can in the 20% to grow your returns exponentially.
Applying this logic to exercise, my conclusion is the ideal workout schedule is to work out for 12 minutes at a time as many times a day as you can.
Frequency
If I recall correctly, it takes about 30 to 45 minutes for the glycogen store to replenish itself. Therefore, you should try to engage in a 12 minute workout every sixty minutes.
With 24 hours in the day, does this mean we should work out over 4 hours a day (23 X 12 minute workouts)? I think not!
Using the 80/20 rule again yields about 5 exercise sessions (24 hrs X 20% – remember, we always only want the effective 20%).
The ideal workout schedule is now 12 minutes of exercise 5 times a day. A total of 1 hour of exercise daily.
Does it matter which 5 hours of of the day? I would say use those five hours where you’re sitting on your derrier in front of the computer or watching TV. The idea is keep your body from going into whatever damaging state it enters after more than an hour of no physical exertion.
Intensity
Research shows that major and lasting physiological changes are initiated during short bouts of high-intensity exercise. In fact, there is now a big trend toward Interval Training. Just Google “interval training” and you will find plenty or research and articles that support this notion.
Our 12 minutes of exercise needs to be intense.
Type
The exercise needs to get the lungs, heart, and major muscle groups involved. As long as the exercise meets these conditions, it’s pretty much a matter of personal choice and ability.
My preferences are jumping jacks, squats, jump rope, push ups. Other than jump rope, these exercises require no equipment- eliminating some of the reasons to weasel out of working out.
If you do want to use a treadmill or other equipment, check Smooth Fitness for promotions.
Frequency + Intensity + Type + Time = F I T T
Could I find anything to support my theory?
Sure enough!
A recent article on ScienceDaily published by medical researchers showed that if you spend most of your time sedentary (think work-at-home), then even working out 3 or 4 times a week for an hour at a time will not overcome the long term effects of being sedentary!
Their conclusion was that short bouts of exercise every hour was key to staying healthy! (I’ll be darned if I can’ t locate the article again- I’ll post the link to it when I find it). They proved this by comparing the results of two test groups, one doing the frequent daily exercises and the other the usual 1-hour grinds 3x a week but mostly sedentary otherwise. The ones that did the frequent exercises had far more significant and sustained changes in their body chemistry and physical conditioning.
Add to that the recent U.S. Surgeon General’s increase from 30 minutes to 60 minutes in recommended daily exercise to maintain health, and I feel I’m on pretty solid ground.
DISCLAIMER: These are just my thoughts. I’m not a nutritionist, physical therapist, physical trainer, medical Dr., or in any way qualified to dispense advice on this topic! Always consult a doctor before trying anything new.
I figured this article was important enough to reproduce here in case it gets taken down eventually on ScienceDaily.
Full URL to the source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071119130734.htm
Sitting May Increase Risk Of Disease
ScienceDaily (Nov. 20, 2007) — Most people spend most of their day sitting with relatively idle muscles. Health professionals advise that at least 30 minutes of activity at least 5 days a week will counteract health concerns, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity that may result from inactivity. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia say a new model regarding physical activity recommendations is emerging.
New research shows that what people do in the other 15 and a half hours of their waking day is just as important, or more so, than the time they spend actively exercising.
“Many activities like talking on the phone or watching a child’s ballgame can be done just as enjoyably upright, and you burn double the number of calories while you’re doing it,” said Marc Hamilton, an associate professor of biomedical sciences whose work was recently published in Diabetes. “We’re pretty stationary when we’re talking on the phone or sitting in a chair at a ballgame, but if you stand, you’re probably going to pace or move around.”
In a series of studies that will be presented at the Second International Congress on Physical Activity and Public Health in Amsterdam, Hamilton, Theodore Zderic, a post-doctoral researcher, and their research team studied the impact of inactivity among rats, pigs and humans. In humans, they studied the effects of sitting in office chairs, using computers, reading, talking on the phone and watching TV.
They found evidence that sitting had negative effects on fat and cholesterol metabolism. The researchers also found that physical inactivity throughout the day stimulated disease-promoting processes, and that exercising, even for an hour a day, was not sufficient to reverse the effect.
There is a misconception that actively exercising is the only way to make a healthy difference in an otherwise sedentary lifestyle. However, Hamilton’s studies found that standing and other non-exercise activities burn many calories in most adults even if they do not exercise at all.
“The enzymes in blood vessels of muscles responsible for ‘fat burning’ are shut off within hours of not standing,” Hamilton said. “Standing and moving lightly will re-engage the enzymes, but since people are awake 16 hours a day, it stands to reason that when people sit much of that time they are losing the opportunity for optimal metabolism throughout the day.”
Hamilton hopes that creative strategies in homes, communities and workplaces can help solve the problem of inactivity. Some common non-exercise physical activities that people can do instead of sitting include performing household chores, shopping, typing while standing and even fidgeting while standing. Given the work of muscles necessary to hold the body’s weight upright, standing can double the metabolic rate. Hamilton believes that scientists and the public have underestimated common activities because they are intermittent and do not take as much effort as a heavy workout.
“To hold a body that weighs 170 pounds upright takes a fair amount of energy from muscles,” Hamilton said. “You can appreciate that our legs are big and strong because they must be used all the time. There is a large amount of energy associated with standing every day that can’t be easily compensated for by 30 to 60 minutes at the gym.”
Only 28 percent of Americans are getting the minimal amount of recommended exercise. Hamilton predicts that eventually there will be health campaigns with doctors advocating limiting sitting time, just like they ask people to limit sun and second hand smoke exposure.
“The purpose of medical research is to offer effective new strategies for people whom the existing therapies are not working,” Hamilton said. “Because our research reveals that too little exercise and excessive sitting do not change health by the same genes and biological mechanisms, it offers hope for people who either are not seeing results from exercise or can not exercise regularly. The lifestyle change we are studying is also unlike exercise because it does not require that people squeeze an extra hour into their days and/or get sweaty at the gym, but instead improving the quality of what they already are doing. One misrepresentation is that people tend to say ‘I sit all the time, so your studies suggest that I can’t even work,’ but Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson showed us that you can be very productive and still do great work in an office with a ‘standing’ desk.”
Adapted from materials provided by University of Missouri-Columbia, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.