Benefits of Walking * Spotlight My Health

Why Walking is Good For Your Health

Walking is such an everyday kinda thing to do that we tend not to even think of it as an exercise or workout. For this reason, you may wonder what benefits you would get from just plain ole walking.

What comes to mind first is that walking is easy, can be done at any age and/or fitness level, with just a good pair of tennies. And there are ways to work some cardio into your walking.

Benefits of Walking

Walking for your health has many added benefits.

**A regular brisk walk can help you get to and then maintain a healthy weight.

**Loss of body fat.

**It can also help with ailments such as high blood pressure, stroke or heart disease.

**You can get some cardio in and get your heart rate up for a bit.

**Walking is also weight bearing. While some may consider walking a light form of exercise, it’s actually good for many parts of your body. It’s considered a low-impact exercise, but you are in essence carrying your body with you which is considered weight bearing.

** Slows down the loss of bone density known as osteoporosis. According to the National Library of Medicine, walking is especially good for women. As we age, walking helps to keep our bones healthy.

**Revs up our immune system.

*Gets you out into nature and the sunshine.

How Long Do You Need to Walk to Reap the Benefits

Research and studies have shown that a 15-20-minute walk, five days a week can give us several benefits. Walking revs up our immune system. This is a benefit which means fewer sick days leading to missed work.

And even if you did get sick, your symptoms may be milder. These are good enough reasons to start your own walking regiment; however, there are many more reasons for walking.

little kids get the benefits of walking all the time

The CDC recommends that most adults aim for 10,000 steps per day, which is about 5 miles. Since walking is low impact with moderate intensity, there is a whole range of health benefits and very few risks.

Additional Benefits of Walking

1) Burn Calories and Lose Weight

Walking can help you burn calories which can help you maintain or lose weight. You can use a calorie calculator to help you determine your calories burned. Walking quickly on a regular basis, for longer time can definitely help you get to a manageable weight.

Because of any extra weight you may be carrying, walking helps even more. The extra weight is like carrying your own set of weights everywhere you go. But, with continued walking, besides just losing weight, you will notice that your overall endurance and body strength increases.

When this begins to happen you can then walk faster, go farther and for longer periods of time which will definitely get you into the cardio realm. And of course, the process continues.

2) Ease Joint Pain and Strengthen Bones, Muscle and Joints

Walking can help protect your joints, including your knees and hips. The movement helps lubricate and strengthen the muscles that support our joints which in turn helps protect the joints including hip and knee joints.

3) Can Help Lower Your Blood Sugar

Try taking a short walk after eating to help lower your blood sugar. A small study found that taking a short walk after each meal helped improve blood sugar levels more than taking a 45-minute walk some other time of the day.

You may want to consider making an after-meal walk a regular part of your routine. It can also help you fit exercise in throughout the day.

4) Helps Boost Your Mood

As you walk, your body is busy releasing endorphins. These endorphins help boost your mood and reduce depression.

So, sometime when you may be feeling a little blue or even angry, pull out your tennies and get to walking. Chances are your mood will be better by the time you get back home.

5) Boosts Immune Function

There are many of us concerned with our immune system, especially since Covid came into our lives. And walking could help strengthen your immune system.

Recent research shows that moderate-intensity walking ramps up our immune systems. Waahoooooo!

It happens because walking helps to increase the number of immune cells. These cells then turn around and attack pathogens in our body which lowers our risk of getting very sick with an infectious disease.

And on top of that, if you do get sick, this research also found that people who walk more, spend less time in the hospital when and if they become ill.

Sounds very advantageous to take daily walks to get these benefits. However, if you live in a colder climate, you can certainly walk on a treadmill and get the same benefits.

You can also try walking in a mall, if you live either in a cold climate or a very warm and humid climate. Inside a mall you would be warm in the cold weather and cooler from the AC in warmer months. That’s how easy it can be to work walking into your daily life.

6) Gain More Endurance Because of Your Extra Energy

When you are feeling sluggish or tired, what do you do? Many of us reach for some form of caffeine. But going for a walk may actually be a more effective energy boost than that of coffee or other form of caffeine.

This is because walking increases oxygen flow throughout the body. It can also help raise the hormones that are responsible for elevating your energy.

Those hormones are cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine.

To begin to experience these benefits, we should do some type of moderate intensity exercise like a fast-paced walk, three days a week for 30 minutes or three 10-minute walks during the day. You get the same benefits from the three 10-minute walks.

7) Improve Cardiovascular Fitness

Walking is free to do and easy to fit into your daily routine. All you need to start walking is a good pair of walking shoes.

Walking faster and up inclines or rugged terrain brings cardio into your walking. This in turn helps your heart to grow stronger which helps your heart to pump your blood more efficiently throughout your body.

As your muscles get stronger and your body becomes overall healthier, you will probably lose fat also, which helps with blood pressure.

tracker to keep track of steps for the day

8) Extend Your Life By Reducing the Risk of Chronic Disease

When you walk at a faster pace, it could aide in extending your life. Researchers found that just walking at an average pace compared to a slower pace resulted in a 20% reduced risk of overall death.

The study found that walking at a brisk or fast pace (at least four miles per hour) reduced the risk by 24 percent. The researchers looked at the association of walking at a faster pace with factors like overall causes of death, cardiovascular disease, and death from cancer.

“The physical benefits of walking are well documented,” says Scott Danberg, a paralympic athlete in Florida.

The American Diabetes Association recommends walking as one way to lower blood sugar levels and your overall risk for diabetes.

Some research even shows that walking can help lower blood pressure too. For instance, researchers have found that for every 1,000 daily steps you take, you could lower your systolic blood pressure by .45 points.

That means if you walk 10,000 steps daily, your systolic blood pressure is likely to be 2.25 points lower than someone else who walks only 5,000 daily steps.

9) Tone your legs

If you want to strengthen the muscles in your legs, try walking. Then to build up more strength in your legs, walk in a hilly area or on a treadmill with an incline. Or find routes with stairs.

10) Walking Can Also Improve Your Sleep

When you add lots of movement and/or exercise on a regular basis, you should begin to sleep better. A 2019 study from Sleep found that when postmenopausal women who regularly do light to moderate-intensity physical activity sleep better at night than those who are sedentary.

Seven Tips For Walking to Lose Weight

**First Things First

Get yourself a good pair of walking shoes. Go to a sports gear store that can steer you to a pair that will work for you. They’ll ask what you’ll be doing so they can help. It’s a good way to start your walking regime and you’ll be less likely to get hurt.

**Recruit a Walking Buddy

There’s almost nothing better than to be walking with a good friend and get on with the chitchat. Girl, you can get the whole neighborhood covered or who’s seeing who, etc., and be finished walking before you even know it.

Nothing wrong with that. Plus you will be less likely to ditch your walk when you know someone else is going to show up and be waiting on you. Both of you help the other with accountability.

**Music

If you can’t find a walking buddy, put on some tunes with a beat that will make you want to walk just a bit faster. Again, you’ll be busy listening to your music and de-stressing and your walk will be done in no time.

**Make Walking Become a Habit

Try to set a realistic number of days and time when you first start walking. If you tell yourself you’re going to walk every day, but your schedule only permits three days, you’ll think of yourself as a failure. Not a win-win for you.

That’s not the purpose of getting healthier. Instead, choose to start with three specific days. It is more realistic, more manageable and will help you feel great for hitting your goal. And that’s more motivation to keep going.

Don’t be strict with yourself until you have found your stride. If the first three days you pick don’t work, try another combination.

There is no one to answer to but yourself, so experiment with the days to walk, the times, your routes, how fast, etc. This is your baby, so you make the calls. Which brings me to me next point.

plenty of people get the benefits of walking

**Short Walks Are Better Than Not Walking At All

Life is just plain, downright busy and tends to get in the way of the best laid plans. So go with the flow and do two or three short, 10 minute walks on days that it seems that is all the time you have.

Walk a little faster and you’ll still get some health benefits, which is better than nothing.

**Develop Several Different Walking Routes

It’s important for several reasons to change your walking routes. Your body will get used to whatever route you take day in and day out. You need to try and work different types of terrain into your walk.

Flat so you can go a little faster, incline to work your legs and get some cardio in. See where I’m going with this.

But don’t forget your scenery—you can take a different route to see different things too.

One last reason to change up your routes is for safety. It’s not good to take the same route all the time to where someone could notice that. Keeping everyone guessing which route you will take each time is better for safety.

**Track Your Walks

I don’t know about you, but I can be competitive even with myself. If I just put an “X” on the calendar for a day that I walk and I consistently see those “Xs”, then that ramps up my motivation.

But it also gives me an idea of where I’ve started, what I’ve done, what I may want to change and make plans for where I’m going with new reachable goals as my body changes.

Final Thoughts

While the number one factor in losing weight may be changing your diet, walking can also give you a hand up for weight loss. A daily walk is a legit way of helping with your weight loss journey; it’s simple, easy, doesn’t cost much and is effective.

Not to mention all the benefits that add up to much better health. And that’s what this journey is all about….