Walking is relatively easy, and has proved beneficial since 460 BC. There are many studies proving physical benefits that come from walking everyday. I’d like to introduce intermittent walking to you today, a practice that encourages you to move throughout the day to further increase these benefits.
An Introduction to Walking
Walking is relatively simple. I’m not saying it’s always easy, but it’s simple, and for most of us, we’ve been doing it a while! And you know, I’m not a stickler for walking only – there are so many different ways to move our bodies. I use walking to illustrate that relatively simple efforts can have an outsized effect on our health, and even more importantly, how we feel.
Why do I say it like that?
Well, affecting our health is huge, of course. I’ve built a passion for my career in helping people realize their health goals so they can go on to do all the other things in life that they like. But in a less future-oriented mode, I also want people to experience that finding the right way to move our bodies – and that may be walking or simple stretching or just being more active while we go about the business of everyday life – just moving our bodies makes us feel good now.
For most of us, though, moving moderately gives us a ridiculously long and impressive list of health benefits, AND it also leaves us feeling better in so many ways. How can that not result in us having a better day? And how can those better days strung together not lead to a better life? It’s great to celebrate what we’re doing by dwelling a little bit on that list of benefits that moderate walking gives us. So let’s take a little time today to bask in the ways we’re taking care of ourselves – our right now selves and our future selves – by taking our walks and/or moving our bodies in another way, but not necessarily an extreme way.
A History of the Benefits of Walking
We’re going way back to the father of medicine – Hippocrates. We know him best because his name is on the oath doctors take today, the Hippocratic oath. He was born in Greece in 460 BC, so of course, all of what he thought was going on with the human body wasn’t quite right. I mean, we’ve got a lot of medical advice being given today that’s not quite right, and we could walk for miles while we talked about THAT subject! I’ll reign myself in, though, and get back to Hippocrates.
Several things he did get right, and among them, was his appreciation of the act of walking. He said, Walking is Man’s Best Medicine. And by man, I’m SURE he meant human’s best medicine. As far back as the BC era, there was appreciation for walking as medicine! I think that’s pretty impressive! I’m sure there’ve been those advocates all along, but somewhere along the way, many of us got the sense that doing moderate movement was worthless, and that if we weren’t going to – fill in the blank here: run a marathon, do a tough mudder or a Spartan race, or participate in the CrossFit games or whatever extreme form of exercise you’ve heard of – if we weren’t going to do those, we might as well just sit tight. Literally. Sit on the couch, order from the drive-through, shop online instead of in person. Because those feelings can keep us very still. And stillness results in the antithesis of that long list of benefits l mentioned earlier. And staying still also contributes to our feeling bad emotionally, and in terms of mood. The all or nothing way of thinking has hurt us as a modern culture, but luckily, breaking out of it almost immediately does good!
There are some simple choices, such as going in to grab coffee versus ordering from the drive-through or walking into a store and moving around to try on clothes versus ordering clothes online, that add up to make a big difference. This shows us the kind of movement that matters. We’ve probably all heard we should park far from the store, or take the stairs instead of the escalator and these are all true. But there are so many other ways we can add some steps in, and other movements, and they all do add up. By emptying the dishwasher, even, instead of leaving it for my kind husband, I’m doing myself a favor, as well as doing him one! Looking for opportunities to move is a whole different mindset, one that really helps to combat the fact that we barely have to move to accomplish anything in this day and age, because of all the conveniences we have.
The Benefits of Walking
We could pile on the steps if we walked while we talked about all the evidence-based findings about the benefits of walking and moderate movement, so I’ll just highlight a few in this blog.
Here’s an Excerpt From Harvard Health Publishing’s “Walking for Health” book:
“The Harvard Nurses’ Health Study, which has been tracking the health behaviors of more than 200,000 women for more than three decades, has shown that moderate walking for an average of 30 minutes a day can lower the risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes by 30% to 40%, and the risk of breast cancer by 20% to 30%.”
It goes on to talk about the heart protective benefits of walking, such as “a third of all heart attacks and deaths due to heart disease in middle-aged women could be avoided if the women simply walked for exercise. Harvard researchers followed more than 70,000 women ages 40 to 65 for eight years and found that walkers were less likely to die from heart disease.”
And as we’ve talked about, it’s never too late. Even women who’d been extremely sedentary and who started walking during the study saw these benefits as well. So all the more reason to take that first step OR that next step! And walking is equally protective in men, so if you are one, also keep walking; and if you know one, take them with you on your walk!
Intermittent Walking
There’s research arguing for those of us at risk to do shorter bouts of walking throughout the day. One study found that walking for 15 minutes immediately after each of 3 meals provided better blood sugar regulation than just one 45 minute walk.
You may have heard the saying “sitting is the new smoking”? Well, it’s not quite right as it turns out. It’s not sitting per se, they’re finding. Rather, it’s not moving that is the problem. It’s being stationery that is the root of these health issues. The key really is to figure out a way to be active throughout the day. In fact, those who do a more rigorous type of exercise like what we mentioned earlier – if they don’t also move throughout the day, they lose a lot of the benefits of exercise. And that’s really easy to do.
Something in us, almost subconsciously, can say to ourselves, we worked out already today – we can take it easy. But, the more we can find those opportunities to move --spread over the course of the day -- the better. Sometimes this requires setting up a new system in our lives, perhaps in concert with a slightly different mindset. If we’re more oriented to finding a few extra ways to move each day, then try spreading them out instead of doing them all at once - you’ll find it does wonders. Maybe that does look like a walk in the morning, but then just being more conscious to move several times after that. None of this requires sweating or really changing our overall schedules much at all. More like a few nudges to get us to simply move a bit.
That can be to get up from our desks to grab a glass of water, and maybe walk down the hall to talk to a colleague instead of emailing. Or it might be emptying the dishwasher or moving clothes from the washer to the dryer when we’ve been still for a bit. Taking a quick break to stretch after driving for an hour can help rejuvenate us, and for when we go back to flying, taking a walk down the airplane aisle every hour or so can also help. I’m hoping this provides a bit of flexibility as you’re fitting your walk in, as if your schedule makes it tough to find a big chunk of time, I hope it’s helpful to hear that short walks are not only an option, but potentially a fantastic one. People with dogs to walk are also probably happy to hear this. Dogs do get us to walk more, as we’ve talked about, and I know mine loves to get out more than once, but it doesn’t have to be for long! We’ve been hearing about intermittent fasting a lot, right? Well, this is intermittent walking, and I highly recommend it!
Conclusion
Whether you’re training for a marathon or walking around the block once a day, try to take up intermittent walking this week! You’ll be surprised to find how beneficial moving throughout the day can be for your mind, body, and attitude.
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