Active Exercise (with new graphs!)

As often happens to me, I got inspired by a new book. I won't write about the book just yet, but my inspiration came from this blog post.  I'm not all the way through, but I'm taking the point about needing to exercise, not just move around a bit.The book focuses on heart rate as a gauge of exercise, which is a good way to do it. However, I've got much more complete data from my nifty BMF device I've been wearing for four years.

The BMF measures movement with accelerometers, and adds measurement of skin temperature and skin impedance/conductivity (ie, how much you are sweating!).  This is why its such an intrusive device compared to the Fitbit, Nike bands, etc. The company claims its well calibrated, and those few comparisons I can find on the web agree it measures overall activity better than any other device.  The BMF measures "mets" which I have never bothered to research - I first heard of them using the Wii Fit, which also uses them. It allows some customization of how many mets equals "moderate activity" and how many equals "vigorous activity".  I made an adjustment to lower the threshold for "vigorous" because after wearing the device initially for a few weeks I never got to vigorous!  So my definition of moderate is 3 mets to 5.5 mets, and vigorous is anything over 5.5 mets.

I made some brand-new graphs to look at my exercise history, using this data which has been collected all along.  Here is the total exercise history:

You can faintly make out along the bottom some darker red bars - those are "vigorous" exercise - hardly any!  I broke out just the vigorous, and got this:

I have no idea what happened on November 14, 2010, my all-time high for vigorous exercise.  I went back and looked at old blog posts, the closest thing I have to a diary, and there is nothing the explains it. More interestingly, the concentrated vigorous exercise is in early 2012, when I decided to start running and train for some 5Ks. It really did get me moving.

The book recommends 45 minutes of exercise a day, six days a week. It further recommends breaking that out to two days of vigorous aerobic exercise, two days of more moderate, and two days of weight training.It is easy for me to accumulate 45 minutes of moderate exercise, and I do give myself credit for active housework here. But I have had less than 10 days in four years where I did 40 or more minutes of vigorous exercise!

I am focusing on moving more, and its having its results. Here is just this year's exercise log:

Again, the discerning eye may see some darker coloring at the bottom - that is vigorous exercise, as I try running again.

Based on book recommendations, I need to focus on that 45 minutes daily piece, and keep up trying to up the ante with running.  Just as an aside, I've almost never found myself moving into "vigorous" territory with anything but running. Jumping jacks at the gym workout, sure, but that's in tiny bursts. Because the extra stress running puts on my body, I'll have to figure out other options eventually.

Excelsior!