10X Your Health With This One Simple Movement

Two groups of sedentary men participated in a study that compared the measurable benefits of jogging vs. walking. Researchers had participants jog or walk for 30 minutes, four times per week. Which group did better?

Surprisingly, the walkers showed similar results to the joggers in terms of weight loss and endurance. A second study conducted for the British Journal of Sports Medicine backed up the findings. Over the course of 12 weeks, previously sedentary women began walking. Participants lost body fat, improved their HDL cholesterol concentration, and gained endurance. When they stopped walking for an additional 12 weeks, their results were reversed. 

Your Body is Designed to Walk

You might have heard that the human body is designed for movement. We are amazing in our ability to bend and flex, and we have an astonishing capacity for endurance. Yes, we have the ability to run, but we truly excel when it comes to walking.

Think about what our ancestors had to do to survive. They spent hours and sometimes days tracking animals, gathering food, and moving from one camp to another. They ran short distances, but for the most part, they walked, engaging in a technique known as persistence hunting. In persistence hunting, animals were methodically tracked until they were too exhausted to escape. The hunters got the meat their people needed to survive, and it’s quite likely that they carried it long distances back to camp, walking steadily until they arrived home.

Later, most people continued to do lots of walking in pursuit of food and other goods. While horses and other pack animals helped, most people spent the majority of their time in motion, planting, harvesting, gathering, hunting, and handling essential chores. There wasn’t much sitting! Today, others do these things for us, and we have machines to take care of mundane tasks.

Think about it: Now that food is readily available, we don’t have to walk long distances to get to it. We can get it at a fast-food drive through, and we can even have it delivered if we like, walking just a few feet from the couch to the front door and back again. This is just one example! We have elevators and escalators to save the number of steps we take. We have cars and buses and trains. We look for parking close to movie theaters, where we spend free time sitting. I could go one and on – but I’m sure you get my point. If you think about the amount of time you spend in a seated position for work, during your commute, and during your downtime, you’ll probably come up with a shocking figure.

Sitting is the New Smoking, and What Happens when you Cut Back

This isn’t meant to shame anyone, but instead, to raise awareness of the potential for serious problems. There’s a common saying that sitting is the new smoking, thanks to research that links our sedentary lifestyles with health concerns ranging from obesity to high blood sugar to an increased risk of cancer and heart disease. Luckily, even simple actions such as spending time standing, stretching, and walking at a leisurely pace can make a huge difference. As study after study shows, exercise doesn’t have to be intense to provide benefits – especially when it has been a long time since you got up off the couch or took time away from your desk to move your body.

Some Primary Benefits of Walking

Besides weight loss, better heart health, and improved HDL cholesterol, what can you look forward to when you make walking part of your weekly plan?

• Less stress
• Better mood
• Greater self-esteem
• Enhanced focus and creativity
• Better productivity at work
• Stronger, more flexible muscles
• Better joint health
• Enhanced immunity
• Better balance
• Better, deeper sleep

There’s a lot more, but for now, we’ll end the list of benefits with these findings from a study released by California State University, Long Beach:

“Walking more each day is related to a wide variety of mood and personality variables. The more people walk each day, the more energetic they feel and the better their mood. Although intuitively it would seem that walking more reduces energy, the opposite is true. More walking is associated with more energy. In addition to more energy and better mood, self-esteem and happiness increase when people walk more. Also, walking more appears to result in better nutrition. Why this occurs is unclear, but it may be related to the energy connection (Thayer, 1996). It is apparent that energy is an important variable as demonstrated by increased sleep being associated with more walking.

How to Get Started

You don’t need much to get started with walking – in fact, all you really need is a place to walk, comfortable clothing, and a pair of shoes that feel comfortable on your feet.

You can walk almost anywhere, meaning that you don’t need a gym membership or even a specially designated walking trail. You can walk at malls or shopping centers during bad weather. You can walk up and down the hall for five minutes at home or get your blood pumping by walking up and down stairs a few times. You can go around the block once or twice.

You don’t have to spend long stretches of time to start receiving the benefits of walking. In fact, little bits add up. If for example you took four 5-minute breaks to walk each day, it would add up to 140 minutes – almost 2 ½ hours per week. Add just one more 5-minute walk break and suddenly you’ve upped your weekly exercise time to a touch over 3 hours.

Here are a few easy ways to get some walking in without much effort at all:

• If you watch TV, stand up and walk around during commercials.
• If you work at a desk, set a reminder to stand up and walk around every 30 minutes or so. Try to take longer 5-minute breaks to walk up and down a long hallway or go outside for a quick lap around the parking lot or a city block.
• Take 5 or 10 minutes to walk around your neighborhood after dinner.

Of course, longer walks are beneficial and they can be enormously enjoyable, particularly when you’re able to get outside for a little sunshine and fresh air. Imagine taking a break, listening to your favorite music (or the sounds of nature) and clearing your head for about 30 minutes. You’d return feeling refreshed, relaxed, and ready to face whatever is next on your agenda.

More Walking, More Benefits

Like so many things in life, the more you put into your walking program, the more you’re going to get out of it. A little is good, and more is even better. Once you’ve gotten into the habit of taking little walks, you’ll probably be ready to take the next step – in fact, you’re likely to notice that you crave the gentle motion of walking, along with the mental release that accompanies it.

When you get more intentional with your walking habit, your benefits will increase. Here are some things you can look forward to when you decide to walk for about 30 minutes per day on most days of the week:

• Walking regularly can improve your body’s insulin response and help you shed stubborn belly fat.
• Walking helps prevent constipation by encouraging the digestive tract to move things along, so you enjoy greater regularity.
• Your risk of heart disease will drop. The exact percentage depends on other factors; however, every little bit helps.
• Lower depression risk. Those who are depressed notice reduced symptoms.
• Stronger, tighter muscles.
• Stronger bones: Walking for as little as 4 hours per week reduces the risk of hip fractures by about 43%.
• Lower diabetes risk: If you log an average of 3,500 steps daily, you can cut your risk of diabetes by about 29%.
• Less sugar cravings, even when you walk for as little as 15 minutes.
• Enhanced immunity, particularly during flu and cold season. A study found that people who walked for 20 minutes per day or more, 5 days per week, took 43% fewer sick days than those who exercised just once per week. Those who did get sick had milder symptoms and a shorter recovery time than low- to no-exercise study participants.
• Better memory: People who walk for just 120 minutes per week protect their brain’s ability to plan and remember.
• Lower arthritis risk and less joint pain for those who have already developed arthritis.
• Greater longevity: Even walking for 75 minutes per week can add about 2 years to your lifespan.

If you’re female, you may want to consider gradually upping your daily walks to about an hour or take some longer walks on weekends. According to the American Cancer Society, 7 hours of weekly walking can reduce your breast cancer risk by about 14 percent, even if you have other risk factors like being overweight or taking hormones.

Easy Ways to Up Your Walking Game

Getting more than a few short walking breaks per day can sometimes feel like a bit of an effort in the beginning. It helps to make a commitment to yourself, but as most of us know from experience, it takes more than commitment to stay motivated! Try one or two of the following tactics to increase the amount of time you spend walking each week and within a month or two, you’ll be in a habit that’s very easy to maintain for life.

• Make definite, actionable goals, i.e. “I’ll take a 20-minute walk after dinner each night.” When that 20-minute walk has become a habit, you may want to increase your time by five or ten minutes, or you might want to add another longer walking session to your daily routine, such as a ten-minute walk during your lunch break.
• Get a pair of comfortable walking shoes if you don’t have them already. I keep my shoes and a few pairs of clean socks in my car, so I can take a nice walk whenever I feel like it.
• Engage your body by looking forward, standing in an upright, relaxed posture with your stomach muscles lightly tightened. As you walk, allow your arms to swing naturally and notice that your feet want to naturally roll forward from heel to toe.
• Ensure that you’re well-hydrated. Carry water with you!
• Start tracking your progress. People who wear a fitness tracker or keep a simple journal detailing the amount of time they spent walking tend to feel excited as their step or time total grows. It feels great to see how far you’ve come!
• Get together with a friend or loved one and connect face-to-face during the time you spend walking. Some people do this outdoors, others head for side-by-side treadmills at the gym.
• If you like audiobooks or music, make listening part of your routine. I personally enjoy my Audible membership and I crave my exercise time because it’s my opportunity to catch up on my “reading.”
• Take time for active, on-your-feet fun. Try outdoor festivals, museums, nature trails, or even some window shopping.
• Get your health care provider in on the game. If you’ve been sedentary for a long time and you have significant health problems, see about tracking data such as your blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, weight, and waist-to-hip ratio. You can keep track of a couple of these metrics at home using a scale and a tape measure, in case extra doctor visits aren’t available to you. Like tracking steps or time, tracking physical progress can be extremely motivating.

Last but not least, don’t worry too much if you miss a day here or there. But if you notice that you’re making excuses not to walk, re-evaluate and start over again. This exercise is so simple and so natural, and it feels so good to be a little more active!

Paired with other easy, actionable steps we’ll discuss in coming articles, even a little bit of walking helps you make massive strides toward better health for your body, mind, and spirit. Get started now and you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to begin feeling and looking better.

Sources

https://www.collective-evolution.com/2016/05/27/this-is-your-body-on-walking/

www.csulb.edu/~psych/deptinfo/faculty/thayer/APA2005WashingtonDC.rtf

https://www.healthline.com/health/5-minute-daily-workout-routines-really-beneficial

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/5-surprising-benefits-of-walking

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/fitness/in-depth/walking/art-20046261

https://www.prevention.com/fitness/a20469314/health-benefits-of-walking/

https://www.prevention.com/fitness/a20485587/benefits-from-walking-every-day/

https://www.livescience.com/54797-short-bouts-exercise-fit.html