“2023 is going to be the year I get fit!” – sound familiar?

 

A 2018 large American survey showed that intention to exercise is THE MOST POPULAR New Years resolution in the United States, accounting for nearly ONE THIRD of all resolutions.  On top of that, the third and fourth most common resolutions were to lose weight, and eat healthier.

 

We love this!  Any intention to improve your health is nothing but positive.

 

What comes as no surprise is how few of us keep up with our resolutions.  In fact, despite January being statistically the busiest month for people signing up as new members at gyms, up to 80% of them will quit within the first 5 months.  Ouch!

 

We get it.  People lose motivation.  They feel guilty about paying money for a membership and not using it.  They lose further motivation.  It spirals and eventually it’s easier just to quit the membership than it is to deal with guilt.

 

But here’s a little known secret:

 

You know what’s better than not exercising?

 

Wait for it……

 

SOME exercising!

 

When Dave and I bat around different blog topics, we typically get selfish.

 

By this I mean, we tend to pose questions that we are genuinely curious about and then selfishly turn these into our blogs.  (You can tell we are passionate about longevity, best forms of exercising, and nutrition to name a few).

 

This year I read about a gym that got hammered in the media for not allowing new members to sign up in January essentially saying they don’t want ‘resolution members’.

 

Like most people I thought this marketing campaign was ridiculous, especially since we know that most gym models account for up to 80% of their members just paying and not even showing up, so why shame new members!?!?

 

This all stoked my curiosity.  Fitness guidelines from the WHO call for 150 to 300 minutes of moderate intensity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous intensity aerobic exercise weekly plus 2 or more days weekly of muscle strengthening activities.  I wanted to know if there was any data out there detailing what percentage of the population actually hits these recommendations?

 

The purpose of this is in no way to shame folks for their inability to hit the recommended guidelines.  Heck, I work in the health field and there are many weeks in the year that I don’t hit this.

 

Instead, I am presenting the data to encourage you to not take an “all or none” approach to fitness.  By showing you the number of people that don’t hit the guidelines, we are hoping to inspire you so if you don’t hit the recommended amount, you can take some comfort in knowing are in great company.  What these types of studies do not show is the fact that Some Exercises is Better than No Exercise!

 

Now before digging into the statistics, take a moment, review the recommended amount of exercise above, and take a guess at the percentage of adults across the world actually hit this recommendations.

 

Now keep that number in mind and read on, it will be answered shortly.

 

The history behind exercise guidelines is vast.  In the US, the CDC and the American College of Sports Medicine have been putting out recommendations since 1995.  Traditionally this has only focused on aerobic fitness, but since 2007 for adults and 2008 for youth, global physical activity guidelines for public health have included 2 or more days of muscle strengthening activities.  A move that we applaud.

 

Why you may ask?

 

Well there is great value in combining aerobic and strength training.  Both forms of exercise independently have benefits but there seems to be some cumulative health benefits of combining both, specifically in adults.  It is beyond the scope of this blog to go into detail on this, however one interesting, over-arching statistic is that meeting the guidelines for BOTH aerobic and strength training versus meeting them for just one of the two activities is prospectively related to a lower risk of all cause mortality in adults, cardiovascular disease diagnosis and cancer mortality.

 

In 2020, the WHO put out worldwide guidelines for adults as well as adolescents.  (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/physical-activity)

• For adults: 150-300 minutes of moderate intensity or 75-150 minutes of vigorous intensity or an equivalent combination PLUS 2 or more days a week of strength training at a moderate or greater intensity.
• For kids and adolescents: 60 minutes daily of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity, mostly aerobic, as well as vigorous intensity activities and those that strengthen muscle and bone at least 3 days a week (and limit the amount of time being sedentary, particularly the amount of recreational screen time).

 

So what would you guess the percentage of people worldwide that are hitting these numbers?

This was a November 2022 extremely large meta analysis of over 3.3 million participants looking at 32 countries that have studied adherence to physical activity guidelines.

 

They looked at individuals aged 12-17 and those over 18 as 2 subgroups.

 

Here are the results:

• For those over 18 years of age, 17.12% of people meet the recommended guidelines
• For those 12-17 years of age it is 19.74%.
• Adherence is higher in men by roughly 6%.
• Sub-dividing those over the age of 18 into two groups sees 21.21% in ‘adults’ and just 13.63% of ‘older adults’ hitting the recommendations.
• There is association with adherence depending on one’s body mass index where underweight and obese individuals have the worst adherence.
• This is also seen for education where 8.26% of low education, 19.56% of medium education and 26.50% of high education individuals meet the guidelines.

 

The key finding as put out in the paper is this:

Just one in 5 adolescents and adults meet the recommended guidelines for aerobic and muscle strengthening activities in this large representative population sample from 32 countries.

 

So how close was your guess?

 

To be honest I wasn’t overly surprised.  But what I would be far more interested in knowing is how many of these people do SOME SORT of physical activity.  Maybe there’s an additional 20% that are active 3 times weekly, yet the sum total does not hit the WHO recommendations.  Maybe there’s another 20% that have some good weeks and some bad but also don’t hit the recommendations.

 

What really matters is the message.  We would all like to be more active.  Yes, you can take activity recommendations as an end goal, but in no way should it be ‘all or none’.

 

If you aren’t active at all currently, adding once weekly will have immediate and consequential benefits to your health.

 

Exercising twice weekly and want to do more?  That’s great too!

 

I guess our message to you is that Some exercise is always better than no exercise.  Add to this that More exercises is almost always better (unless taken to the extreme).

 

So don’t feel badly if you do not hit the recommended amounts.  Instead, just shift your focus to doing a little bit more.

 

Simplicity for the win.