Sixty minutes. One hour. Thirty-six hundred seconds. That’s the amount of time most U.S. adults are urged to exercise each day, according to the latest recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences.

And yes, if this seems like a big dose of activity, you’re right. This is about twice the activity previously recommended to achieve some modest health benefits (and twice what the Everyday Challenge sets as a goal.) But this is the amount that an expert panel concluded is needed to help most Americans achieve and maintain a healthy body weight.

As Ed Howley, president of the American College of Sports Medicine, puts it, the amount of daily exercise that “may be required to lower your blood pressure may not be enough to maintain your weight.”

Yet some exercise experts are worried that the new goal may seem so burdensome that it will discourage people from doing any activity at all.

“My biggest reservation is that people will say, ‘My god, I have to do an hour!’ when that’s not necessary for (some) health benefits,” notes Glenn Gaesser, professor of exercise physiology at the University of Virginia. In fact, recent studies have shown that 30 minutes a day of moderately paced walking can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes all conditions that are associated with the U.S. rise in obesity.

Still, if you plan to aim for 60 minutes, here is some advice from experts to help meet that goal:

l No need to get all the exercise at once. “Three 10-minute walks will provide the same health benefits as one 30-minute walk,” says Steven N. Blair, director of research at the Cooper Institute and Clinic in Dallas. Gaesser, for example, periodically drops into a health club in his office building and spends 10 minutes on a stationary bike. While each minute of activity helps, studies suggest that the best health and calorie benefits come from getting at least eight to 10 minutes of physical movement at one time.

l Steps count. Experts say that taking the stairs is an excellent way to add to daily activity levels. Each step up requires you to lift your body weight. And speaking of steps, if you wear a pedometer that hour of moderate-intensity activity can be achieved by logging about 10,000 steps. So if you’re regularly clocking 2,500 steps or fewer per day, you’re still in the “couch potato” category, according to William Haskell, deputy director of Stanford University’s Center for Research in Disease Prevention.

l Take the talk test. Use it to see if your walking pace is fast enough. “If you can’t talk, you are going a little bit too fast,” says the University of California’s George Brooks, a member of the NAS committee. “If you can talk easily, you are going too slow. When you start to get winded, you are going about right.”

l Stay active throughout the day. Give yourself a gold star for going to the gym, but don’t use it as an excuse to remain inert for the rest of the day. Keep moving throughout the day.

l Go for intensity. The more vigorous the activity, the more calories burned. And that means you may be able to get by with less than an hour of activity every day. Example: A 132-pound woman who jogs for about 10 minutes at 8 miles per hour burns the same number of calories as she would walking at 4 miles per hour for 25 minutes.

l Build up activity on the weekends or on days off from work. Okay, so you’re tethered to your desk during the week. Experts say stick with 30 minutes of activity as a weekday goal trying to boost it when you can but make up most of the difference on weekends.