The real story… more than half of the adult residents of Windsor-Essex County are not active enough to get any health benefits. 

What does this mean? Those who are not physically active have a much higher risk of heart disease, stroke, obesity, type II diabetes, depression and breast/colon cancer.

To help adults get moving, Health Canada has developed physical activity recommendations. 

The recommendations are grouped into three activities:

1.  Endurance activities (4-7 days per week) -  These type of activities help your heart, lungs and circulatory system stay healthy and give you more energy.  They range from walking and household chores to exercise programs and recreational sports.

-         Walking, “aerobics” or “aqua aerobic” classes

-         Cycling, skating or continuous swimming

2.  Flexibility activities (every day) - These types of activities help you to move more easily by keeping your muscles relaxed and your joints moving freely. This is especially important as you age – it can reduce your risk of injuries that might prevent you from enjoying life!  Flexibility activities include those that involve reaching, bending and stretching.

-         Gardening and mopping

-         T’ai Chi and Yoga

-         Bowling, golf, curling and dancing

3.  Strength activities (2-4 days per week) – These activities build stronger muscles, bones and joints and help improve your posture.  Strength activities include those that make your muscles work against some sort of resistance.

-         carrying heavy objects, like wood or leaves

-         climbing stairs

-         activities that use your own body weight as resistance like sit-up or pushups

-         activities that use an added weight for resistance, like dumbbells or weigh machines

The guidelines suggest that you accumulate or add up 60 minutes of activity throughout the day, every day… but this amount of time depends upon how much effort or how “hard” you work.  If you are involved in activities that are more “moderate” in effort, you can reduce the time to at least 30 minutes, 4 days a week.

For example, on Monday you may decide to walk for 15 minutes during your lunch break at work and then do 15 minutes of gardening when you get home.  You have accumulated 30 minutes of activity. 

Think of 30 minutes of physical activity as dollars in your health bank –

 make an investment in your health today!

Reliable Links

Canada’s Physical Activity Guidelines for Healthy Active Living – This website provides downloadable copies of Health Canada’s physical activity recommendations for adults, including an informative booklet which provides more details on how to build physical activity into your life.

Adults - http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/pau-uap/paguide/index.html