walking will make you feel good

Walking is the best form of exercise you can have to obtain better health and a fitter you. One of the biggest advantages is it will cost you nothing. It is a form of exercise which can be taken up by anyone regardless of age or physical condition providing you start off sensibly, as with all forms of exercise you are not used to doing.

The first steps to getting healthier should be taken slowly and it is advisable that  if you do not exercise on a regular basis, start off with no more than a 10-minute walk every other day. This can then be gradually increased to walking 3 times a day for 10 minutes or twice a day for 15 minutes at a time.

There are many ways you can fit this into your daily routine without too much trouble; just consider when and where you could alter your routine to walk instead of taking the car or bus.

The benefits of walking are numerous to your health and well-being.

Simply by altering your routine and walking 30 minutes or more each and every day you can:

• See an increase in your overall fitness and the tone of your muscles

• Feel good and look better

• Find that your level of energy increases

• Feel a lot less stressed and find that you are slower to start feeling stressed

• Find that your pattern of sleep changes and you sleep better and feel more rested on waking

• Begin to reduce the risk of heart disease

• Reduce the risk of developing certain types of cancer

• Find that depression starts lifting and you don’t feel down as easily as you once did

• Your outlook on life in general and the way you deal with things changes for the better

• You lose weight and look better

• You find that your muscles, joints and bones are stronger

• You reduce the risk of developing diabetes

You can start gaining all these and more benefits simply by increasing the amount of walking you do per day and being more active. In order to gain the best health and fitness from walking you should aim to walk at a moderate pace.

The definition of a moderate pace is that, while you shouldn’t be over-exerting yourself, you should be walking faster than just strolling along. This means that while you are walking, you should be able to hold a conversation without getting breathless. Your temperature should rise a little, but you shouldn’t be sweating to the extreme.

Not only will you feel better and look better once you have been on your new regimen for a while, you will feel many more benefits health wise and be well on the way to leading a more productive, happier and healthier way of life.

Focusing on increasing the amount of exercise you get rather than decreasing your food intake is a perfect way to reduce your body fat.  A recent national study was done using two groups of sedentary men, one group in their 20’s and the other over age 65.  A lot was learned from this accumulated data and it is interesting to note that there was a significant relationship between lack of physical activity and fat.  Not surprisingly, the most sedentary men had the most body fat.

These studies have also indicated that the governments current recommended daily allowance for calories does not correlate with the body’s actual energy needs.  For example, although 2400 calories have been calculated for older men, they in fact burned an average of 2800 calories daily.

The leading experts now recommend that people who want to lose weight start increasing their physical activity.  Just being more active in general (such as climbing the stairs instead of taking the elevator, moving around instead of sitting still, sitting up instead of lying down as well as showing some excitement and enthusiasm instead of boredom), are things that more effectively burns calories and reduces body fat.  Everyone seems to have lost sight of the value of being active.  Consider this, a half-hour aerobic workout accounts for far less energy expenditure than our minute-to-minute movement in the office or at home.

Millions of Americans are trying to lose weight, spending approximately $30 billion a year on diet programs and products and often they do lose some weight.  But, if you check with the same people five years later, you will find that nearly all have regained whatever weight they lost.  A national panel recently researched data to determine if any commercial diet program could prove long-term success.  Not a single program could do so. Being seriously overweight and particularly obesity predisposes individuals to a number of diseases and serious health problems, and it’s now a known fact that when caloric intake is excessive, some of the excess  is more than likely saturated fat.

People who diet without exercising often gain more weight with time.  Although your weight may initially drop while dieting, such weight loss consists mostly of water and muscle.   When the weight returns, it comes back as fat.  To avoid this cycle, increase your metabolism by exercising regularly.

Walking is one of the best exercises for strengthening bones, controlling weight, toning the leg muscles, maintaining good posture and improving positive self-concept. To lose weight, it’s more important to walk for time than speed.  Walking at a moderate pace yields longer workouts with less soreness – leading t more miles and more fat worked off on a regular basis.  High intensity walks on alternate days help condition one’s system.  But in a walking, weight-loss program, you are not required to walk an hour every day as some people would have you believe.

When it comes to good health and weight loss, exercise and diet are inter-related.  Exercising without maintaining a balanced diet is no more beneficial than dieting while remaining inactive.

Hope this information helps motivate you to get off the couch and enjoy the outdoors!

Darlene
This is what I’m using to eat better!

Thank you for stopping by!

Here at ANewerHealthyYou you will find a very laid-back community promoting good health, nutrition and fitness. I welcome any and all comments. If you have been here before, you know that I have recently changed the site. I missed the interaction on the original website and really look forward to sharing my health journey with everyone who might be interested. I will be reviewing different weight-loss and exercise programs periodically, so make sure and come back periodically to see me and get the latest scoop on whats out there in regards to good health.

Darlene

Thank  you again for joining me here!