HLTH 4340 Week 9 Activity Log Analysis Example

One Week of Activity Logged by a 63-Year-Old Retired Letter Carrier: Compendium Codes, Moderate Minutes Against the Federal Guideline and Why the Answer Turns on How His Dog Walks Are Classified

Student Name

Walden University

HLTH 4340: Fit and Well: Core Concepts in Exercise Science

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

One Week of Activity Logged by a 63-Year-Old Retired Letter Carrier: Compendium Codes, Moderate Minutes Against the Federal Guideline and Why the Answer Turns on How His Dog Walks Are Classified

Method: How the Record Was Kept

The record analyzed here was kept by Victor, a composite 63-year-old retired letter carrier described for this exercise, over seven days from Monday, March 2, to Sunday, March 8, 2026. He wrote every bout of activity in a pocket notebook, with start and stop times taken from his phone clock and rounded to the nearest five minutes, and a short description of what he did. For walks, his phone's fitness app also recorded distance and average speed. Bouts shorter than five minutes were not written down. Every number below inherits these conditions: a one-week window, five-minute resolution, self-recorded descriptions and speed data only for walks.

Each activity was then assigned a code and a metabolic equivalent (MET) value from the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities (Herrmann et al., 2024). A MET expresses the energy cost of an activity as a multiple of resting energy expenditure. Following the federal Physical Activity Guidelines, activities of 3.0 to 5.9 METs were classed as moderate and those of 6.0 or more as vigorous; activities below 3.0 METs were classed as light and not counted toward the aerobic guideline (Piercy et al., 2018).

The Record

The record shows a regular pattern. Victor walked his dog twice on most days, did a resistance band routine on Monday and Thursday, and added one other moderate activity on five of the seven days. Saturday's mowing was the longest single bout and the highest MET value of the week.

Table 1

Victor's Activity Record, March 2 to 8, 2026, With Compendium Codes

MET values from the online 2024 Adult Compendium (Herrmann et al., 2024). The resistance band rows are counted toward the muscle-strengthening guideline, not the aerobic one; the 2.5-MET row is light activity.

Converting the Record to the Guideline's Units

The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans express the aerobic recommendation in minutes: adults should accumulate between 150 and 300 moderate-intensity minutes each week, or half as many minutes, 75 to 150, at vigorous intensity, or a mix of the two. They also recommend muscle-strengthening activity of moderate or greater intensity involving all major muscle groups on two or more days a week, and, for older adults, multicomponent activity that includes balance training (Piercy et al., 2018). The 2018 edition removed the earlier requirement that aerobic activity come in bouts of at least 10 minutes, so every recorded moderate bout counts.

Using the codes in Table 1, Victor's moderate aerobic minutes were 240 from dog walks, 30 from gardening, 25 from the brisk walk, 35 from cycling and 45 from mowing, a total of 375 minutes and 1,319 MET-minutes. No activity reached the vigorous threshold. His band routine, done on two days and described in his notebook as covering legs, back, chest and arms, matches the muscle-strengthening recommendation. Nothing in the record is a balance activity.

The Comparison, and the Decision It Depends On

On these figures, Victor's 375 moderate minutes exceed the upper end of the 150 to 300 minute range. That conclusion, however, depends almost entirely on one coding decision. The Compendium lists "walking the dog" at 3.0 METs, exactly at the moderate threshold. It also lists walking by speed, and Victor's phone recorded an average of 2.3 miles per hour across his dog walks, with frequent stops. At that speed, the matching code is walking at 2.0 to 2.4 miles per hour on a firm, level surface, which the Compendium sets at 2.8 METs, below the moderate threshold.

If the dog walks are coded by speed rather than by activity type, they become light activity and drop out of the aerobic total. Victor's moderate minutes then fall from 375 to 135, below the 150-minute minimum. The comparison with the guideline is therefore not a single answer. With activity-type coding he exceeds the recommendation; with speed-based coding he falls 15 minutes short of it. The speed data are the more specific information for his walks, which argues for the second reading, but an average speed hides the brisker stretches between stops, which argues against treating every minute as light. The honest report is that his week lies close to the minimum and that the dog walks decide which side.

Limits of the Record

Four limits apply. First, the record relies on self-report, and self-reported activity often disagrees with directly measured activity. A systematic review by Prince et al. (2008) found correlations between self-report and direct measures that were generally low to moderate, ranging from negative values to 0.96, with no consistent direction to the difference. Victor's notebook is closer to a diary than a recall questionnaire, but its descriptions of effort are still his own.

Second, recording can change behavior. In a study by Clemes and Parker (2009), 63 adults wore a pedometer under different conditions for a week each; mean daily steps were 8,362 when the device was disguised as a posture monitor and 9,635 when participants could see their counts and had to log them in a diary. Victor knew he was recording, and his week may have been more active than usual.

Third, one week is a short window. Weather, season and events change activity from week to week, and March in his area allowed gardening and mowing that a January week would not.

Fourth, one record describes one person. It says nothing about retired adults in general.

What the Record Supports

A record of this size supports a description of one week. In that week, Victor met the muscle-strengthening recommendation, did no balance work and accumulated moderate aerobic activity either well above or just below the guideline, depending on how his slow, interrupted dog walks are classified. A longer record, or a device that measures intensity directly, would be needed to say which reading reflects his usual activity.

References

Clemes, S. A., & Parker, R. A. A. (2009). Increasing our understanding of reactivity to pedometers in adults. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 41(3), 674-680. https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0b013e31818cae32

Herrmann, S. D., Willis, E. A., Ainsworth, B. E., Barreira, T. V., Hastert, M., Kracht, C. L., Schuna, J. M., Jr., Cai, Z., Quan, M., Tudor-Locke, C., Whitt-Glover, M. C., & Jacobs, D. R., Jr. (2024). 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities: A third update of the energy costs of human activities. Journal of Sport and Health Science, 13(1), 6-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jshs.2023.10.010

Piercy, K. L., Troiano, R. P., Ballard, R. M., Carlson, S. A., Fulton, J. E., Galuska, D. A., George, S. M., & Olson, R. D. (2018). The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. JAMA, 320(19), 2020-2028. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.14854

Prince, S. A., Adamo, K. B., Hamel, M. E., Hardt, J., Connor Gorber, S., & Tremblay, M. (2008). A comparison of direct versus self-report measures for assessing physical activity in adults: A systematic review. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 5, Article 56. https://doi.org/10.1186/1479-5868-5-56