This morning I went to “Pain before Breakfast” – a 5-mile
run that the JAGs, and any ambitious significant others, embark on every
Thursday at 5:30am. Not particularly
pleasurable, but now that I’m working remotely, it’s become more important than
ever to build regular physical activity in to my day.

Right up there with nutrition, regular exercise plays a
major role in the prevention of disease.
For example, though it’s not quite as intuitive to me as diet, physical
activity in any form helps to lower cancer risk. This finding comes from the American
Institute for Cancer (AICR) recommendations
for cancer prevention, which were released this time last year and will be
revisited today and tomorrow at a conference in Washington.
A mandate to move more appeared again just last month in the 2008 Physical
Guidelines for Americans from the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS). The report found strong
evidence for a link between physical activity and lower risk of several
diseases including early death, type 2 diabetes, and colon and breast cancers
in adults. Active kids benefit from
improved endurance, favorable body composition, and bone health, to name a few.

So how much activity should we shoot for? Here are the HHS recommendations for adults
aged 16-64:

• Adults should do 2 hours and 30 minutes a week of
  moderate-intensity, or 1 hour and 15 minutes (75 minutes) a week of
  vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity, or an equivalent combination of
  moderate- and vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity. Aerobic activity
  should be performed in episodes of at least 10 minutes, preferably spread
  throughout the week.
• Additional
  health benefits are provided by increasing to 5 hours (300 minutes) a week of
  moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity, or 2 hours and 30 minutes a week
  of vigorous-intensity physical activity, or an equivalent combination of both.
• Adults
  should also do muscle-strengthening activities that involve all major muscle
  groups performed on 2 or more days per week.

I’ve got fish at least twice a week down, but have some room
for improvement with these goals.