No Time in the Week to Exercise? How About the Weekend?

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Just because you don’t exercise regularly during the week doesn’t mean you can’t make it up on the weekend.
The World Health Organization offers guidelines for physical activity, suggesting adults get at least 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity or 150 minutes of moderate activity each week. While experts have suggested people spread regular exercise throughout the week, that’s not always feasible for everyone.

An international team of researchers analyzed the exercise routines and health of more than 350,000 U.S. adults who participated in the National Health Interview Survey from 1997-2013 to see what could be learned about different approaches to physical activity.

Health benefits of weekend exercise

Over the years study subjects were followed – each were tracked an average of 10 years – those who achieved a total of 75 minutes of vigorous activity or 150 minutes of moderate activity over one or two days each week had:
-An 8% lower risk of all causes of death than physically inactive participants.
-The same risk of death from all causes, heart disease and cancer as those who exercised the same amount but over three to five days.

Those who exercised regularly during the week did have slightly lower mortality risks than the “weekend warriors,” as researchers dubbed them. “But these differences were not statistically different, so we can say that they are comparably beneficial,” one of the study’s co-authors Donghoon Lee, a nutrition research associate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health..