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Trying to improve your aerobic fitness without an exercise prescription that includes frequency, duration and intensity is like taking a pill that comes without an active dosage and without instructions on how often to take it.

Without a definition of intensity, based on time and heart rate, the exercise guidelines recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine and the Centre for Disease Control are an unscientific nonsense: ‘All healthy adults aged 18–65 yr should participate in moderate intensity aerobic physical activity for a minimum of 30 min on five days per week, or vigorous intensity aerobic activity for a minimum of 20 min on three days per week.’

This sort of prescribing routine is one of the root causes of the inability of the medical industry to restore people with general metabolic dysfunction to good health. Doctors can’t complain that they’re too busy when their diagnostic and prescribing practices guarantee that their customers will soon be back slumped in the surgery waiting room flipping through a 2004 Reader’s Digest’.

A good aerobic fitness program requires a dosage involving frequency (times a week), duration (length of each session) and intensity of effort (based on heart rate). This rule forms the basis of the Fitbit Aerobic Fitness Zone System.

If you’re serious about becoming aerobically fitter, merely recording time, steps or distance is pointless unless effort is also taken into account.

Fitbit calculates the number of zone points you’ve accumulated using a formula based the actual time (T) in minutes, maximum heart rate, resting heart rate and heart rate reserve. On the next page is a rough guide, based on percentage of maximum heart rate. It’s a close estimation of how Fitbit calculates the Fitbit zones.

Fitbit has two aerobic fitness training zones.

Zone 1: if you get your heart rate over (circa) 65% of your (estimated)        age-related maximum heart rate (220 minus age) you get 1 pointper minute.

Zone 2: if you get your heart rate over (circa) 75% of your maximum heart rate you get 2 points per minute.

The prescription

A medical, fitness, or allied health practitioner can prescribe a certain number of points a day to improve metabolic and mental health. 50 zone points a day sounds about right for someone wanting to see an improvement in their health.