Advise physical activity
As an adjunct to their dietary modifications, encourage patients to increase both their activity involved in daily living and their planned physical activity.
Bodily movement
Physical activity consists of any bodily movement that increases energy expenditure (e.g., walking, climbing stairs, gardening, cleaning).
Planned, structured, and repetitive
Exercise is planned, structured, and repetitive bodily movement done to improve or maintain one or more components of physical fitness.
Benefits
Physical activity benefits cardiorespiratory fitness, reduces cardiovascular disease and cancer risk, and improves mood and self-esteem.
Weight maintenance
Importantly, although dietary changes have the most impact on weight loss, physical activity helps with maintenance of weight loss.
Physiologic adaptations
Physical activity helps to counter the physiologic adaptations in response to diet and weight loss that cause weight regain over time.
Non-Exercise Associated Thermogenesis (NEAT)
Not all physical activity has to be intentional exercise. Most people burn more energy in their non-exercise physical activity than in their planned exercise. Lifestyle activities can contribute meaningfully to cardiorespiratory fitness and weight management, especially when tailored to patient goals and abilities. Non-exercise associated thermogenesis can be increased by things like parking farther away and taking the stairs.
Recommendations
To achieve health benefits related to physical activity, standard recommendations are to engage in 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity each week.
For weight maintenance, the recommendations are to engage in 200 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week. For long-term weight loss, higher amounts of exercise are needed, and a combination of resistance and aerobic exercise may be more effective than either alone.
Recommendations include the following:
- Want to help your patients get more active? Share this health.gov interactive tool to help them build a weekly activity plan.
- Engage in moderate-intensity physical activity for at least 200 to 300 minutes each week to help maintain weight loss.
- Add physical activity into the daily routine, such as walking, using the stairs, doing home and yard work, and increasing recreational activity.
- Incorporate 20 to 30 minutes of resistance exercises to supplement the endurance exercise program.
This PDF (from the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion) contains quick conversation starters, recommendations for physical activity, and other resources for patients