When it comes to fitness and exercise, there are two sides to daily workout routines: One, which simply wards off lifestyle diseases like diabetes, hypertension and hormonal imbalances, and another, which focuses on weight loss/gain and muscle tone. As the US Center for Disease Control has stated in recent years, a person needs a minimum of 30 minutes of mild exercise every day to help ward off these lifestyle diseases. How can you clock those minutes? Here are three plans that give you variety in doing just that.

Minimum exercise plan #1 

• Monday – Spend 45 minutes in the evening going for a brisk walk. Take your ipod or a friend. Make sure it is a brisk walk.
• Tuesday – Yoga. Either join a yoga class two days a week or take time out and practice at home for flexibility.
• Wednesday – Brisk walk or light jog.
• Thursday – Yoga
• Friday – Brisk walk.

Minimum exercise plan #2 

• Monday – do a lower body workout. Even three functional workouts are good enough like – weighted squats, weighted lunges, and deadlifts. 
• Tuesday – one high intensity interval training session such as sprinting is required. So take some time out, find a nearby park and do atleast 6 to 8 all out sprints in 20 minutes, and go home.
• Wednesday – Rest day
• Thursday – Target the upper body. Do overhead presses, pushups, pullups, burpees, most of which you can do at home too.
• Friday – jog or brisk walk for 45 minutes.

Minimum exercise plan #3

• Monday – start your morning with as many suryanamskars as you can manage.
• Tuesday – Brisk walk or sprint
• Wednesday – A full body workout with weights borrowing from workout #2 (mixing and matching the upper and lower body workouts specified)
• Thursday – Brisk walk, jog, or (if you haven’t sprinted on Tuesday) sprint.
• Friday – Some good yoga stretches for core, and/ or Suryanamaskars.

The sky is the limit when it comes to finding a fun exercise plan that works for you, so use this as a guide to minimum exercise and build on it.

*Image courtesy: © Thinkstock photos/ Getty Images