Length of Exercise is More Important

I've found that the amount of time spent exercising is more important than the level of strenuous activity.

That is, spending 120 minutes of low impact, easy exercise is more beneficial than 20 minutes of high impact, strenuous exercise.

The reason is because the longer you keep your metabolism running high, the better. I'm not saying this as a scientific fact, because I haven't studied this as a scientist. But that's been my observation under my own weight loss efforts.

It seems that when you exercise, you're burning calories in two ways. One is from the actual muscle exertion. But the second, is from elevating your metabolism. And that elevated metabolism seems to have a greater impact than the actual physical exertion.

So, once your exercising has stopped, your muscles are no longer expending calories. However, your metabolism is still running high, and will probably continue to run high for several hours afterwards. If you can manage to add more time to the exercise itself, then you're also extending the high metabolism. Hence, it's better to do a low impact exercise for 120 minutes than it is to do a high impact exercise for 20 minutes.

I'll caution you again, I've haven't evaluated this as fact, only as my observation.

Perhaps you can try observing this as well. But I think it makes sense.

If anything, this should at least encourage you to do any kind of exercise, and certainly the more time you spend exercising, the better.

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