Fitness, Lifestyle Taya Bregant Fitness, Lifestyle Taya Bregant

Walking - The Most Underrated Form Of Movement

We are told to stay frequently active and keep our bodies moving, so most of us resort to running, going to the gym, or trying out different sports. While all forms of movement are good, we often underestimate how simple yet effective walking can be for our health.

It is something that the mast majority of people can do and is widely available to be done in various different locations. Instead of looking at walking as just a commuting thing or to go for a relaxing stroll, we can also try to incorporate walking, either on flat ground, uphill or at a faster pace, into our weekly lifestyle for a different and low impact form of movement.

Ready to explore why such a simple thing as walking can be so profound on our health?

Then read onwards 😊

WHY IS WALKING GENUINELY GOOD FOR YOU?


A simple action such as walking can have profound impacts on both your mental and physical health. Find out all about these benefits bellow:


MENTAL BENEFITS

  • Improves your mood

  • Reduces stress and anxiety

  • Improves memory and mental cognition

  • Increases general energy levels during the day and alertness

  • Reduces the frequency of depression and negative emotions

  • Fights against fatigue

  • Increases creativity


PHYSICAL BENEFITS

  • Improvs cardiovascular fitness and health

  • Improves muscle endurance

  • Works to prevent a variety of chronic conditions (heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, cancer, type II diabetes)

  • Reduces blood pressure

  • Slows down our resting heart rate

  • Contributes to maintaining a healthy weight

  • Strengthens our bones and muscle tissue

  • Helps with ensuring deeper sleep

  • Walking after a meal can help with lowering blood sugar and keeping it within healthy measures

  • Reduction in overall body fat

  • Works to improve your balance and coordination

  • Strengthens your immune system

  • Improves posture

  • Eases joint pain

HAVING THE RIGHT TECHNIQUE FOR WALKING

Although the vast majority of us know how to walk and can do so with ease, I wanted to direct some special attention to certain aspects of walking to watch out for:

  • When walking, keep your head up and your gaze directed forward, instead of looking down

  • Try not to walk while looking down at your phone since that additionally worsens your posture

  • Keep your shoulders, neck and back relaxed

  • Don't lean or slouch forward with your shoulders and instead keep them slightly more back to to keep a straight back and keep a good posture

  • Your arms swing alternatively with a slight bend in your elbow

  • Keep you abdominal muscles slightly tightened, helping to create a straighter back

  • When walking, your heel touches the ground first, rolling onto your toes afterwards

If you would like to use walking as a way to loose weight and tone your muscles, specialists think it is best to achieve this when we are repeatedly lowering and raising our heart rate, instead of keeping our heart rate at one pace. Therefore, if you decide to walk on a treadmill, make use of the incline and speed options to vary your walking movement and style on the treadmill to maximize your bodies caloric output. Similarly, if you rather walk outside, finding a hill or uneven trail path will also do the job just as well.

It is overall recommended to be active for at least 30minutes per day, where if you are a beginner when it comes to exercising, walking is a great way to start moving your body more an gradually start incorporating more different types of exercises into your daily or weekly routine as you feel more comfortable. Remember, moving your body should not be seen as a chore or something that you have to do, but instead, movement is something that you get to do. Not everyone has the ability or vitality to just freely move their body around, so if you do, respect and honor that ability.

HOW TO WALK MORE OFTEN

It is definitely true that if you want to make something a consistent habit, it is much more easier to do so if we find the activity enjoyable. Therefore, I have put together a list of ideas for how to personalize your walks and make them that much extra more enjoyable, while making sure to keep you consistent with them.

  • Try walking with friends or joining a walking group

  • To keep you motivated, use a walking app that will also simultaneously track your steps

  • Listen to music or a podcast while you walk

  • If you walk outdoors, try to keep the scenery or walking location varied

  • Investing in a good pair of walking shoes and activewear that makes you feel good

  • Track your progress in terms of how often you go on walks and how many steps you walk per day

  • Getting a dog who loves going on walks might give you a great source of motivation and enjoyment for going on more walks

  • Join online or in person walking challenges

  • Start with a simple walking goal and then gradually work your way up the numbers

  • Try varying your route or walking location to keep the walks more interesting

  • Don't be too hard on yourself if you miss a day or two or you find that somedays you just cant fit in a certain amount of steps. Its all okay, just keep trying your best

  • Try fitting in walking into more mundane parts of your day (Eg: Commuting, going on a walk during your lunch breaks, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, parking a bit further from your work place)

  • If you have a family, try finding a time for walks that works for all of you (Eg: After dinner)

🧠 KEY IDEAS

In this blog post we have looked at the profound and varied benefits that lie behind one of the most understated forms of exercise : Walking. Find out all about why its good for you, how to have a proper walking posture and some ideas for making your walks more enjoyable and exciting.

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Problems Of Sitting Down Too Much

You might have heard the expression that sitting down is the new smoking or something along those lines. Well, it turns out that, sitting down in the last 50 - 70 years has increased significantly, thanks to a rise in more office orientated work which promotes a sedentary lifestyle. As it turns out, excessive sitting down is actually harmful to our health in many ways.

To make you aware of how much of an issue this actually is, here are some statistics which definitely shocked me when I read them:

  • An average person sits down for 12 hours of the day

  • Since the 1950’s, sitting down and inactive office jobs have increased by 83%

  • A study in 2010 which included 184,190 people found that for people who spent more than 6 hours per day sitting down with low levels of physical activity, had a 71% increase in mortality.

  • The scary thing is that a different study showed that people who were also physically active for 5-6 hours per week and were sitting down for 5-6 hours a day, still had a 50% increase in mortality

I hope this paints a better picture of the issue at hand here, and with this I hope to inspire you to keep moving throughout your day with the best of your ability- After all we have legs for moving around and not for sitting down whole days.

Hope you find this one interesting 💛

5 HEALTH RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH EXCESSIVE SITTING DOWN



Poor posture and muscles stiffness

  • When we sit for prolonged periods of time, we put more stress on our spine and other joints which can over time lead to back pain as well as a poor posture, since the more we sit, the more likely we are to start slouching. With this in mind, sitting down also makes our shoulder and neck muscles feel stiff and inflexible, often because our head is slightly tilted down in order to look at our computer screens.

  • Furthermore, excessive sitting down decreases lower body strength as well as a general decline in endurance. This is due to the fact that when we sit, we place more strain on our spine which over time reduces our spine flexibility. This indirectly deactivates and weakness our gluteal muscles contributing to even more back pain and a general loss in lower body strength.



Increased weight gain

  • Some studies have shown a link between prolonged periods of sitting and weight gain, where some of the proposed reasons for this are that nowadays when we eat we sit down, while also being distracted with our phones, a show we are watching or someone we are talking to, causing us to often eat too much too often leading to weight gain.

  • Furthermore, going back as little as 100 years, humans were much more active on average than we are today, simply because work was much more physically manual instead of now when much of our work is done through sitting down based work which mostly requires our mental capacities.



Greater cancer risk

  • There have been some emerging studies which have suggested that prolonged sitting down can actually increase our risk of developing certain cancers such as lung, uterine and colon. However the biological reasons behind this are not clear yet and need more research, but it is interesting to see that sitting down does not only have physical impacts on our body such as muscle stiffness, but may actually affect our internal biology much more than we first believed.



More prone to heart disease

  • Based on science, it has now become quite clear that there is a definite link between people who spend more time sitting down and people who develop heart disease in their lifetime. Sitting down has been shown to increase our blood pressure while also altering the functioning of our blood vessels which along side the increased risk of diabetes, can actually make you much more prone to developing heart disease.

  • A study found that for men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching television and sitting down while doing so, had a 64% greater chance of dying from cardiovascular disease than those men who only watch 11 hours of television per week.



Higher risk of diabetes

  • Additionally, some studies have uncovered a rather underestimated impact of prolonged sitting which is the increase in likelihood of developing diabetes in your lifetime. A different another study found that five days of inactive bed rest was associated with increased insulin resistance which is often a precursor to developing diabetes.

HOW TO SIT DOWN LESS

Below you can find some pieces of advice which you can try incorporating into your everyday, to keep you more mobile and active even with a busy schedule:

  • Stand up every 30 minutes or so (setting a reminder might be helpful)

  • When using public transport for commuting, choose stand instead of sit

  • Try standing up more while talking on the phone or watching the television

  • If your job requires a desk, try out a standing desk which can switch between a sitting and standing position

  • Make use of the stairs and walk up escalator stairs

  • Take a short walking break every time you have a break for a coffee or lunch

  • Drinking more water will encourage you to move to the bathroom more often

  • Try some discrete sitting down strength training exercises during the hours you spend sitting down (example: sitting down leg raises)

I think it is important to raise awareness about this topic since more and more work is requiring us to spend longer hours behind computer screens and sit down more. Without realizing it, we could seriously be damaging our health here.

I hope that you take the information presented here and use it to make more informed choices about your sitting down habits, wether it be at home, work, school or anywhere else.

Thank you for taking your time to read this and I hope that you learn something new 🌟

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