Thank you for this post, extremely helpful and I’m very grateful for the time you put into writing/researching it.
A question: what’s your opinion of when “level of exercise” goes from “diminishing returns” to “negative returns” in health and longevity? Background: I used to train competitively for running, 2xday for 2hrs total time/day, 15hrs week total (a little extra at the weekend) which sounds outlandish but is pretty standard in competitive long-distance running/cycling/triathlon. I quit because a) it wasn’t compatible with doing my best in work and b) I began to worry that pushing my body this hard was not actually good for long term health (for reasons like inflammation load, heart effects etc).
These days I train usually 1 hr/day, 6 days a week split about 50:50 between running and lifting/strength, and still pretty intensely (partly because I’m otherwise prone to weight gain unless I control my diet carefully, which I prefer not to have to worry about, partly because it’s a good antidote to a tendency towards anxiety/depression). I expect, realistically, I’m a low-level exercise addict, and I certainly have some obsessive tendencies. Two questions I’m interested in are:
a) Am I still in “potentially not doing myself long-term favours” territory—i.e. would cutting from 360min/week to 300 min.week be actually better for my health?
b) Even if a) isn’t true, are the benefits so diminished that I should cut to e.g. 5xweek at 45mins/day (225mins) for pure efficiency of time use reasons (am I throwing away 2+hrs a week of valuable time)? My schedule involves either running home from work and taking in a gym trip, or training when I need a break from work, so it’s reasonably efficient, but these days every hour I can squeeze out of a week seems to count. I also walk 30 mins to work every morning, not included in the above. Other than this my lifestyle’s quite sedentary (no active hobbies at present, spend most waking hours at a computer/in meetings).
So around 4200 Met-min/week is my guess for your total activity level. The data is too noisy for me to make a solid recommendation for someone like you up at the tail end of the measured results. For what it’s worth, I doubt you’re negatively impacting your health at that level. Marathons and other extreme endurance events seem harmful to me based on limited data, but stuff well below that is probably beneficial.
Now if we include optimal for stress as an additional criteria beyond just optimal total activity I think we could make some more solid predictions. It sounds like your current routine is dovetailing pretty well with the rest of your work/life balance, so I’d be loathe to change it much if I was in your shoes. OTOH if it does seem like there is a pain point I also doubt you’d be harming yourself significantly by reducing your exercise load slightly. Just be sure to set up some sort of Schelling fence for yourself so you don’t fall too far. I’m guessing maybe setting up such a fence is what motivated your question. I’ll just keep pointing at the 3500 Met-min/week as something we actually have evidence for, even if slight. This pretty much exactly corresponds in your case from switching from 6d/wk to 5d/wk. If you anted to drop it any further you’d probably be wanting to up the intensity to compensate.
Thank you for this post, extremely helpful and I’m very grateful for the time you put into writing/researching it.
A question: what’s your opinion of when “level of exercise” goes from “diminishing returns” to “negative returns” in health and longevity? Background: I used to train competitively for running, 2xday for 2hrs total time/day, 15hrs week total (a little extra at the weekend) which sounds outlandish but is pretty standard in competitive long-distance running/cycling/triathlon. I quit because a) it wasn’t compatible with doing my best in work and b) I began to worry that pushing my body this hard was not actually good for long term health (for reasons like inflammation load, heart effects etc).
These days I train usually 1 hr/day, 6 days a week split about 50:50 between running and lifting/strength, and still pretty intensely (partly because I’m otherwise prone to weight gain unless I control my diet carefully, which I prefer not to have to worry about, partly because it’s a good antidote to a tendency towards anxiety/depression). I expect, realistically, I’m a low-level exercise addict, and I certainly have some obsessive tendencies. Two questions I’m interested in are: a) Am I still in “potentially not doing myself long-term favours” territory—i.e. would cutting from 360min/week to 300 min.week be actually better for my health? b) Even if a) isn’t true, are the benefits so diminished that I should cut to e.g. 5xweek at 45mins/day (225mins) for pure efficiency of time use reasons (am I throwing away 2+hrs a week of valuable time)? My schedule involves either running home from work and taking in a gym trip, or training when I need a break from work, so it’s reasonably efficient, but these days every hour I can squeeze out of a week seems to count. I also walk 30 mins to work every morning, not included in the above. Other than this my lifestyle’s quite sedentary (no active hobbies at present, spend most waking hours at a computer/in meetings).
So around 4200 Met-min/week is my guess for your total activity level. The data is too noisy for me to make a solid recommendation for someone like you up at the tail end of the measured results. For what it’s worth, I doubt you’re negatively impacting your health at that level. Marathons and other extreme endurance events seem harmful to me based on limited data, but stuff well below that is probably beneficial.
Now if we include optimal for stress as an additional criteria beyond just optimal total activity I think we could make some more solid predictions. It sounds like your current routine is dovetailing pretty well with the rest of your work/life balance, so I’d be loathe to change it much if I was in your shoes. OTOH if it does seem like there is a pain point I also doubt you’d be harming yourself significantly by reducing your exercise load slightly. Just be sure to set up some sort of Schelling fence for yourself so you don’t fall too far. I’m guessing maybe setting up such a fence is what motivated your question. I’ll just keep pointing at the 3500 Met-min/week as something we actually have evidence for, even if slight. This pretty much exactly corresponds in your case from switching from 6d/wk to 5d/wk. If you anted to drop it any further you’d probably be wanting to up the intensity to compensate.
Keep up the awesome work.