New Federal Activity Guidelines - am I being too demanding on myself if they don't feel enough?

Image courtesy of http://www.sxu.hu/photo/812863


This week has been a lot better for me exercise-wise than many over the past months: a 20km, 4,000 cal training walk in the weekend, two boxing classes, a spin class this morning, and cumulative walking to and from work and the gym that totals 13km so far.

And yet it still doesn't feel like I'm doing nearly enough.


What are the Guidelines?

The new US federal guidelines mandate a minimum of 2.5 hours a week at a level where you can talk comfortably; then state that for health benefits, you want to make that around 5 hours a week. Then then go on to say that 'fitter individuals' might want to start with 75 minutes of more vigorous exercise a week, and slowly increase that to 2.5 hours per

And I look at that and think... hang on. That just doesn't seem enough. I mean laughably not enough. Not for someone who's actually supposed to be fit (which, incidentally, I don't consider myself... I'm 5'3'' and 90kg, very little of it muscle now, for frak's sake - that doesn't argue for a high level of physical fitness). And I don't know whether I'm just being unrealistic and overly demanding here (all training for a 100km walk aside, which I realise changes what should be consiered reasonable and what shouldn't)


So What is Enough for Me?

If I'm honest with myself, 'enough' for me, outside of event training, means an absolute minimum of 5 workouts a week; and ideally 6-8, so that I'm doing more than one workout some days. It means workout lengths of at least an hour (there's your 'vigorous training') as well as getting a reasonable amount of walking (at least 45 minutes, although more is better) in each day, at least 5 days a week, on top of that.

Now that I'm walking trailwalker, 'enough' involves 34km of weekly walking (ideally excluding walking to and from work, because I'm conscious that's all flat, and yeah... it just feels like it shouldn't count - it feels like I'm cheating) at a level that gets my heart rate up well beyond conversational levels, plus at least 4-5 non-walking workouts a week because I hate letting that side of things go. And it's also supposed to involve 2 resistance workouts a week, because damn, I'm supposed to fit them in there somewhere, although gods know exactly where :-S

'Enough', when I think about it, is a variant of what I used to be doing when I was at my fittest - what I did to get there and then stay there for as long as I could. Of course, 'enough' also got me injured, and I honestly wonder if for me, 'enough' really translates as 'the absolute maximum possible I can do without seriously injuring myself'. Which is damn hard to judge until after you've actually gone and injured yourself, it should be acknowledged.


So Where Does that Leave Me? Keep Aiming High, or Get Real About it All?

Setting high standards is a good thing, but the trouble with setting them this high is that, especially with the cough I've been dealing with since January (which has seen me go whole weeks without workouts, or if I'm lucky, getting 1-2 in per week and nothing else), is that they just feel completely unrealistic. And that frustrates the hell out of me, because they were realistic once.

So, then. That's my question. Outside of Trailwalker training (for which I have a programme I'm aiming to get fit enough to follow)... should I really drop my standards about what is 'enough' to something a little more in line with what people out in the 'real world' are doing? Or should I keep chasing what I once was able to do, and aiming for the stars - on the basis that even if I don't reach them, I might still get to the moon?

What do you think?