Activity and
exercise are not the same thing.
Understanding this can increase our fitness. We need both in our lives.
Activity, in the
sense I mean, is pretty much any movement we do. Gardening, housework, shopping, and such are
good examples. Increasing our activity
level can help us toward fitness by burning more calories than, say, sitting on
the couch. What we are tracking when we
shoot for 10,000 steps per day is activity level.
Exercise, on the
other hand, is a bit more work. Our
muscles need to end up tired and/or sore.
We need to get breathless. We
need to sweat. This is where the real
changes in our bodies come from. When
you get in those 30 minutes of elevated heart rate, you know you have
exercised.
Sometimes we
confuse activity with exercise. When we
go to the gym and walk on the treadmill while reading, we may think we are
exercising. For some of us, that kind of
pace is enough to get our heart rates up and IS in fact exercise. For others, it’s just activity, better than
reading on the couch, but not enough to really increase our fitness level.
Go for it! Get active and get exercise!