What’s the deal with WALKING?
Have you heard? Walking is one of the single best things you can do regularly for your overall health. I know what you might be thinking…"Yeah but Sara, walking isn’t really that hard & doesn’t get my heart rate up very much & I don’t feel exhausted afterwards, are you sure it’s a “good enough” workout??" Yes, I am. Let me tell you why…
In this blog post, I will cover:
Is siting really the “new smoking?”
The physical benefits of walking
The mental benefits of walking
Actionable steps to include walking in your routine & make it a habit
Is sitting really the “new smoking?”
Like most things, there has been conflicting opinions/research about this topic. While smoking and sitting aren’t going to give you the same negative health outcomes, both behaviors are behaviors that you don’t want to turn into a habit. In a study at Harvard, they said that an explanation for why sitting is harmful is that it relaxes your largest muscles for a long period of time. When muscles relax, they take up very little glucose from the blood, raising your risk of type 2 diabetes. It also increases pain in the muscles and joints from lack of movement. Ideas to break the long periods of sitting during the day, take phone calls while walking, set an alarm on your phone at least once every hour to remind you to get up and move. Take a walk during lunch and/or before work starts for the day. It doesn’t take much but it takes effort and action on your part to actually do it. It’s so important.
The physical and mental benefits of walking
This list could be miles long, however, I’ll try to keep it relatively short. Just 30 minutes of walking 5 days per week can benefit your health immensely. Walking can reduce the risk of coronary artery disease, improve blood sugar levels (try taking walk after meals! This will help to reduce the spike in blood sugar after a meal because you are USING your muscles so your muscles are using that glucose), reduce the risk of osteoporosis, reduce the risk of colon and breast cancer, reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, improves cardiovascular endurance, helps to maintain weight (if this is a goal of yours), improved sleep, improved digestion, and more. Walking is bilateral stimulation for the brain, which means it helps your brain and helps to release trauma as well as enhancing cognitive function, mood, creativity, etc. Walking can help to boost your mood within ten minutes of participating in the activity. It doesn’t take much. Walking with a friend or loved one, this can help to strengthen your friendship/create connection.
BONUS! Go for a walk first thing in the morning and allow sunlight to enter your eyes. Leave the sunglasses at home. This helps to set your circadian rhythm. A good night sleep starts with what we do in the morning. Huberman Lab podcast has great episodes on circadian rhythms if this is something you are interested in, I’d highly recommend checking him out.
Actionable steps to include walking in your routine & make it a habit
Set SMALL goals.
I am a big believer of setting small and attainable goals. As humans, we like to succeed. If you set a large goal and you fail, you are likely to throw in the towel completely and not bother with trying again. However, if you set a small goal and meet it, you’re going to be proud of yourself and you’ll keep going. So start small with this…let’s say that you don’t walk at all now. I would suggest starting with a small goal of walking 5 minutes per day twice a week. This seems SOO SMALL, right?! You’re right. Building a habit is all about establishing the behavior. Once that is set, then you are more likely to make it a habit.
DO your NEW desired habit after an already established HABIT.
This is a trick that I learned from the book ATOMIC HABITS by James Clear. He recommends that you do your new desired habit after an already established habit, that way you are more likely to do it. So let’s say you have a habit of taking your dog out in the morning to use the bathroom. You’ll likely have shoes on already, so go ahead right then and walk for 5 minutes. This increases the chances of you actually doing it because you ALWAYS take the dog out. Does that make sense?
Give yourself an immediate reward for meeting your goal/desired behavior.
If you think about it, some of the behaviors that we have give us positive feedback in the moment, but in the long term can hurt our health. For example, drinking alcohol. In the short term, you feel buzzed or maybe even drunk and your inhibitions are lowered and you are feeling like you are having more fun. But the long term consequence of that is not a positive one. Your sleep is negatively impacted, the next day your energy is less due to the lack of sleep, your brain negatively is impacted, your organs are negatively impacted, even your relationships/work may suffer, etc. Now let’s take going to the gym. The short term benefits may not be as desirable but long term, is a huge benefit. At the gym you may be out of breath, you may want to stop because it’s hard, you may not enjoy every single thing that you are doing, but in the long run, you are helping your body and mind in so many ways. You are strengthening your muscles, you are working on your heart health, it’s impacting your brain and increasing blood flow to your brain, endorphins, etc. So having an immediate reward for yourself after doing something that’s hard in the moment will help you to keep going back to that. So let’s go back to walking 5 minutes a day 2 times per week. After that 5 minutes, give yourself a reward. It can be a big glass of ice water, listening to your favorite song, texting a friend and telling them what you just did, etc. It doesn’t need to be a HUGE reward, but simply recognizing your effort.
I am going to keep this blog post short and give you those 3 actionable tips. Sometimes too much information can be overwhelming. Please let me know if you start to include walking into your daily/weekly routine. I’d love to hear how it’s going! Don’t forget to MOVE your body today. We are meant to MOVE! ENJOY!!
