Exercise exchange: get ready to trade your old ideas about exercise for a simple new one: everything counts, and choices abound. No matter whether your goal is better health, weight loss, or boost in fitness, this handy points plan lets you mix and match your way to success

Natural Health, March, 2005 by Linda Shelton

For What it's Worth: Once you've chosen a goal and identified how many points you'll need each week (see pages 82-84), you can use this chart to start racking up points. Each exchange point represents 100 calories burned in 20 minutes by an average 150-pound woman.

LET'S FACE IT, the basics of exercise are fairly, well, basic: Keep moving, get your heart rate up, challenge your muscles, and burn plenty of calories.

We all know the drill, but as any good trainer will tell you, what most people really want to know is how to take this seemingly straightforward strategy and make it practical. How much exercise is enough? How little can you get away with and still be taking good care of yourself? How can you burn a lot of calories fast? How can you personalize your workouts to fit your life?

crunch the numbers

Think of exercise as simple math: Every time you move your body, you have an opportunity to rack up points, or exchanges, toward better health and fitness. Similar to the concept utilized by many diet plans, this strategy lets you choose what you want to do--from fitness mainstays (like walking and weight training) to things you're already doing but might not be giving yourself credit for (like cleaning and gardening)--and tells you exactly what it's worth.

You might not realize, for example, that an hour of dancing on Saturday night is the points equivalent of an hour doing high-impact aerobics. Armed with this kind of information, you can mix and match activities to suit your tastes and your schedule.

We think you'll be pleasantly surprised to find how quickly and easily the points add up. "This exchange system gives you a simple, clearly defined way to move toward a particular goal," says Dixie Stanforth, M.S., a lecturer in the kinesiology department at the University of Texas at Austin and spokeswoman for the American Council on Exercise. "It also lets you look at your life a little more holistically because every movement you make counts toward health benefits."

choose your goal

Before you get started, you'll want to establish a realistic fitness objective that meshes with your lifestyle and time constraints. In the following pages, we've laid out three worthy goals to choose from--better health, basic fitness, or a-pound-a-week weight loss--and calculated how many points you'll need each week to get there. We've even created a week's sample menu of activities based on each goal. You can follow our suggestions, or look to the Exchange Menu on the opposite page to design your own perfect plan.

round it out

As you pick and choose how you'll accumulate points, keep in mind that varying your activities and your intensity levels will give you the biggest payoffs in terms of health and fitness: cardiovascular activities condition your heart and lungs and reduce your risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes; strength training tones and defines your muscles, builds stability and balance, and protects against osteoporosis; and flexibility/restorative activities improve your range of motion and help you relax and rejuvenate.

If your goal is: better health

Aim for: 14-17 points per week

To improve your overall health, you need enough regular physical activity to condition your heart and lungs, strengthen your muscles, and keep yourself flexible. As a result, you'll enjoy better moods and a boost in immunity, and may even live longer.

An exercise prescription for good health includes the following elements:

* 30 minutes of moderate cardio activity 6 to 7 days a week.

* 2 strength sessions per week that work all your major muscle groups.

* 5 to 10 minutes of daily stretching.

This plan burns 1,400 to 1,700 calories per week, which translates into 14 to 17 points (about 2 to 2 1/2 points a day).

If your goal is: basic fitness

Aim for: 19-28 points per week

Besides delivering overall health benefits, a basic fitness program will increase your cardiovascular endurance, tone your muscles, and improve your coordination.

A weekly fitness program should include:

* 3 to 4 cardio sessions, 20 to 60 minutes each, varying in intensity from mild to vigorous.

* 2 to 3 strength sessions working all your major muscle groups (for each exercise, do 1 to 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps, using enough weight to fatigue your muscles by the final rep of each set).

* 5 to 10 minutes of daily stretching.

Following this plan, you'll burn 1,900 to 2,800 calories a week, for 19 to 28 points per week, or 3 to 4 points per day.

If your goal is: weight loss

Aim for: 35 points per week

If you want to lose weight, you need to expend more calories than you take in. To lose a pound a week, for example, you need to create a weekly deficit of at least 3,500 calories.

A well-rounded program to achieve this goal might include:

* 5 to 6 moderate to intense cardio sessions, 45 to 60 minutes each.

* 2 to 3 strength sessions working all your major muscle groups (for each exercise, do 1 to 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps, using enough weight to fatigue your muscles by the final rep of each set).

* 5 to 10 minutes of daily stretching.