RECOMMENDED HEALTH TARGETS: DO THEY WORK?

Get your five-a-day. Sleep eight hours. Drink eight glasses of water. These are just a few of the ‘essential’ health guidelines we’re supposed to live by, but who can really manage all of the above? And do these ‘commandments’ stand up to scrutiny?

- AMY FLEMING

150 MINUTES OF EXERCISE A WEEK

You don’t have to sweat it out in a smelly gym class to stay fit

The NHS recommends that UK adults get 150 minutes of moderate, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise each week. “These recommendations are the minimum that people need to do to gain health benefits from physical activity, based on four decades of research,” says Gavin Sandercock, professor of sport, rehabilitation and exercise sciences at the University of Essex. “If you follow the recommendations, you’re about 11-15% less likely to die of anything, compared to people who do nothing, and your risk of dying of a heart attack is about 20% lower.”

But he says they’re a watered-down version of the first activity guidelines from 1991, which were for 150 minutes of moderate – but preferably vigorous – activity, in addition to what you already do, in bouts of at least half an hour a pop. 

“The science is really strong for vigorous activity,” says Sandercock. “That doesn’t mean with the eyes popping out, it just means having a higher heart rate. Everything we know about exercise physiology, everything I’ve learned in the past 25 years, tells me that vigorous is best and I recommend it to anyone who is healthy enough to do it. If you want to get fitter, you have to work harder.”

In surveys on physical activity, people tend to exaggerate how much they’ve done, says Sandercock. It’s easier to determine accurately how much vigorous activity you did, and not kid yourself about it. “If I asked you how far you’d run, you probably know, whereas if I asked you how far you walked this week, you’d have trouble answering because it’s more of an incidental activity,” he says.