I've Decided to Exercise: How Much Exercise Should I Do

HI!

A little self-congratulation is in order here. I've decided to exercise regularly!

Now I'm faced with understanding a few things ......

What does "exercise" mean?
How much exercise should I get?
How intense should my exercise sessions be?

Good questions!

Now to answer (for myself) the questions above.

I've just made a choice to say that, for me, "exercise" means: 1) I've made a conscious choice to exercise, 2) I've put on my Polar heart monitor, and 3) I will be exercising for no less than 30 minutes. Anything that doesn't fit those three criteria is "NEAT." NEAT is "non-exercise activity thermogenesis" - stuff like shopping, lawn mowing, walking to the store, playing with the grandkids, etc. You are, of course, free to define exercise any way you want to. However, IMHO (in my humble opinion) it seems like this would be a worthwhile thing to define.

Sounds like too fine a point - I'm OCD perhaps. Well, my experience tells me that unless I go OCD and make definitions like this, as well as tracking my exercise sessions, I forget what I've done, what "personal best" means, whether or not I've exercised, and what works / what doesn't work. I'm too old to leave my health to chance and the vagaries of memory.

Recommendations from reputable sources recommend 2.5 hours per week of moderate exercise or 1.25 hours per week of vigorous exercise for adults, in addition to resistance exercises (weightlifting) twice a week. If an exercise session is minimum 30 minutes, then I'd have to do minimum of 5 moderate exercise sessions a week + 2 days of weight training.

I had to look up the definition of "moderate" exercise. By all accounts, it means exercising within the range of 50% to 75% of my maximum heart rate. There are a number of calculators online that I use to calculate my maximum heart rate, and I found that the numbers run between 154 and 166. Using the most common formula (220-age for males) puts my "moderate exercise range" between 77 and 116.

That doesn't work for me. I know from experience that HR = 77 is waaaaaaaaay too low for me to say I'm exercising - feels to me that a minimum HR of 105 would be more like it since that's my heart rate when I really walk fast. HR = 105 is 68% of maximum.

I found this table that relates average heart rate to the benefits of exercising at that rate.

I think what I'll do is design several different routines that will put me into each of the "zones" on the chart - well, maybe not the Redline Zone so much. Designing routines, and using them based on what I'm eating, how I feel, what I did the day before, which muscles are really sore, etc. makes good sense to me. 

Rather than specific target heart rate, I have a different goal in mind ......... at the end of one year, I will have completed 365 exercise sessions. That's not necessarily one per day, but could be more than one per day with a rest day thrown in for all those other NEAT things I want to do!