Exercise and Wellbeing: A Little Goes a Long Way

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index reveals the extent to which even a little bit of exercise can go a long way. Compared with those who say they did not exercise at all in a given week, those who say they exercised for at least 30 minutes on 1 or 2 days are less likely to be obese. For those who say they exercised five or six days, the likelihood of obesity is cut nearly in half.

The results are from more than 250,000 interviews conducted in 2009 as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Interestingly those who say they exercised every day last week are slightly more likely to be obese than those who say they exercised five or six days. The difference in not exercising at all and exercising one to two days is clearly greater than the difference between exercising three to four days and exercising five to six days.

Exercise and Life Evaluation

These Gallup-Healthways data also reveal a strong connection between exercise and how a person rates his or her own life, now and in the future, on a ladder scale where 0 is the worst possible life and 10 is the best possible life. Based on their responses to this Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale, respondents are classified as "thriving," "struggling," or "suffering." Net thriving is the difference between the percentage of people "thriving" and the percentage of people "suffering." There is a 12 percentage point gap in net thriving between those who exercised 1 to 2 times in the past week and those who say they did not exercise. Simply put, even one or two days of exercise per week may pay off in higher life evaluation.

Net thriving increases further for those who exercise more frequently, but it levels off at five to six days of exercise and then drops substantially -- to 43% -- for those who say they exercised every day. These data cannot tell us whether exercise leads to high wellbeing or whether high wellbeing leads to exercise, but they do suggest that getting the maximum amount of exercise may not promote further gains in wellbeing.

Exercise and Emotional Health

Those who report more days of exercise also report higher scores on the Gallup-Healthways Emotional Health Index. This sub-index of the Well-Being Index is based on 10 daily experiences such as smiling or laughing a lot or being treated with respect the day before the interview. The same rule of "diminishing returns" that applies to life evaluation also seems to apply to emotional health. The gap between non-exercisers and those who report having exercised one to two days is greater, for example, than the gap between those who exercised three to four days versus five to six days. Further, those who report having exercised every day report slightly lower Emotional Health Index scores than those who say they exercised five to six days.

Exercise and Depression

Exercise is also related to reports of having ever been diagnosed with depression. Those who report not having exercised at all in the past week are almost twice as likely to report having been diagnosed with depression as those who report having exercised five to six days. Further, those who reported that they exercised daily were more likely, rather than less likely, to report having been diagnosed with depression in comparison with those who reported having exercised three to four or five to six days in the past week. Based on these data, one cannot say whether regular exercise reduces depression or whether depression reduces exercise. However, in the past decade, researchers have conducted experimental and prospective studies that follow depressed people over time. Such studies show exercise can ease feelings of depression and improve mood. The representative survey data suggest that the results of these clinical experiments may apply well to the general population.

Is Too Much Exercise Really a Bad Thing?

The finding that those who report having exercised every day have lower wellbeing than those who report exercising less frequently has several possible explanations. First, an intense everyday exercise regime could be physiologically and psychologically taxing. Exercise can take up a lot of time and energy. Consistent with these findings, a previous Gallup analysis found that those who exercise feel more well-rested than those who don't -- except for those who exercise every day. Exercising without ever giving one's body time to rest may be less ideal than exercising five to six days per week.

A second reason why those who exercise the most days may not have the highest wellbeing is that some people cope with chronic illnesses by exercising daily once they have been diagnosed. For instance, despite the well-establish connection between inactivity and type 2 diabetes, people who report being diagnosed with diabetes are as likely as people without diabetes to report exercising every day (14% of both groups say so). Likewise, some obese people may also attempt to reduce their weight by exercising daily. These data show that obese respondents are slightly more likely to report having exercised every day (11%) than to report having exercised 5 to 6 days (9%). In other words, there is a sense in which illness may sometimes cause daily exercise.

A third reason is based on occupation and wellbeing. Although some people who are employed in physically demanding jobs may report exercising daily, they may still have moderate to low wellbeing. According to these data, for example, construction workers are more likely than professional workers to say they exercise daily (23% versus 9%, respectively), but construction workers have much lower overall wellbeing than professional workers.

Finally, it is possible that a few inactive people are generous in their definition of "exercising every day." Even if such people are a small minority, they might report "exercising" every day, despite a sedentary lifestyle. All this being said, there is evidence from the scientific literature on exercise for a "diminishing returns" principle. In a position paper published in 2009 in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, a multidisciplinary team of exercise scientists concluded that "The largest increment in mortality benefit is seen when comparing sedentary adults with those in the next highest physical activity level." That same basic pattern clearly appears in these data.

Bottom Line

Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index data reveal a robust but non-linear connection between exercise and wellbeing. One encouraging aspect of these findings is that they show a boost in wellbeing that may come from as little as one to two days of weekly exercise. That is, the wellbeing gap between a sedentary lifestyle and lifestyle of occasional exercise is much greater than the wellbeing gap between moderate and heavy exercisers. The findings not only support the notion that exercise may boost wellbeing, but they also suggest that it is not necessary to exercise every day of the week to reap meaningful physical and psychological benefits of exercise.

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Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews with 287,755 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Jan. 2-Oct. 21, 2009. Sample sizes for the main exercise groups range from a high of 88,419 respondents who reported exercising for no days to a low of 36,475 respondents who report having exercised for five to six days. Margins of error are less than one percentage point for all groups.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones (for respondents with a landline telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell phone-only and cell phone mostly).

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

About the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index measures the daily pulse of U.S. wellbeing and provides best-in-class solutions for a healthier world. To learn more, please visit well-beingindex.com.