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The Exact Bare Minimum of Exercise You Need To Be Healthy: You’re Welcome

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m gonna assume the first two weeks of January went a little something like this: 1) Catch a glimpse of your bloated, hungover body on New Year’s Day. 2) Lose your shit and decide to 3) start a cleanse. 4) Abandon said cleanse within 48 hours because pizza exists. Now you’re at 5) Decide to get your beach body back by exercising harder than a 45-year-old actress who just had a baby.

The only problem is that working out, while fun for about thirty seconds, takes valuable time away from other activities, e.g., drinking and/or watching Fixer Upper in bed for six hours.

Lazy

But, lazy betches, science has finally come to the rescue and calculated the bare minimum of exercise you need in order to not (scientifically) be considered a lazy piece of shit. According to University of Sydney researchers, it’s possible to get all your exercise done in one or two sessions per week.

Hallelujah

The World Health Organization says we’re all supposed to get at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week. People who have no social lives probably do the whole “30 minutes a day, five times a week” thing, but a betch’s time is precious. We inevitably wind up cramming six SoulCycle classes into a single Saturday to make up for the week’s binge drinking. Honestly, I kind of deserve an Oscar for all the times I’m pretending I love the pain when I’m 30 seconds away from puking in the instructor’s gym bag.

In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers compared people who don’t exercise at all (dream), people who only work out once or twice a week (reality), and people who exercise regularly (ew). Obviously, people who worked out all the fucking time were healthier, but apparently, people who only worked out a few times were also less likely to get cancer, have heart attacks, or straight-up die in general.

Blessed

In conclusion? You’re def not going to get a beach bod by only working out once a week, but at least you’ll be alive to take a beach pic in the first place. Just suck in your gut, work on your skinny arm pose, and you’ll barely look like Jabba the Hutt in the Insta.