What is the best way to improve your health, the one answer to most health conditions, and the fountain of youth? The premier health prescription? Walking. Yes, the most basic of all exercise forms, placing one foot in front of the other can do more towards improving your health than any pill, surgery, treatment protocol or supplement.
- It has an effect on every part of your body.
- Walking can help kick-start a weight loss program and keep it going through the plateaus and rough spots.
- It can help you to quit smoking.
- It will lower your blood pressure and balance your cholesterol.
- It will help those with arthritis, diabetes, obesity, heart and circulatory difficulties, depression, mental instability, anxiety attacks, and circulatory disorders.
- Walking keeps the cardiovascular and immune systems working at peak capacity.
- Walking helps keep your arteries young and healthy, warding off cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease and memory loss.
- Physical activity keeps your immune system youthful and powerful. Many forms of arthritis are regarded as a breakdown of immune function.
- Walking will decrease your risk of cardiovascular diseases, arthritis, macular degeneration and even cancer.
Walking is the best thing you can do for your body, and for your health in general. You will find that once you are established in a daily walking habit, your life improves in many little ways as well as the big improvements mentioned.
Make 30 minutes of walking your priority every day. Just walking. Don’t worry about speed, pace, heart rate etc. Just start walking. Warm up by walking slowly for the first 5-7 minutes. You need to prepare the body for this powerful medicine, increasing the depth and rate of breathing, elevating the body temperature, warming up the synovial fluid in the joints, and increasing circulation throughout the whole body.
Now you’re ready for the walk. Just get going. Keep going for 15 minutes, turn around and walk back. After you finish, mark the calendar, and continue to do so every day for the next month. That’s all there is to it. Put on a jacket if you need it. Sun hat and sunglasses. Lace up your sturdy walking shoes and go for a walk. Give yourself and your family the greatest gift there is–a happier, healthier, more youthful, stronger and more energetic you.
This is your prescription and your priority, a daily 30-minute walk. If you need to, reward yourself for daily continuity- a star on your calendar, a prize for the first week of achievement, whatever it takes to keep you going for the 30 minute walk a day.
Keep it up for 21 days and it will be a habit!
Now you will feel so much better you won’t even think of giving it up. You are on the road to health and vigor, keep on trucking! I’d love to hear from you as you go along, to cheer on your successes and listen to your complaints–I’m behind you all the way!
lynn difley
Hi Bill, thanks so much for your wonderful sense of humor. I would say that’s probably the number two health prescription, a good laugh, and you certainly gave us all one. thanks for the chuckle. Lynn
Bill
The Importance of Walking 😉
Walking can add minutes to your life. This enables you at 89 years old
to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at $7000 per month.
My grandpa started walking five miles a day when he was 60.. Now he’s
97 years old and we don’t know where the hell he is.
I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me
The only reason I would take up walking is so that I could hear heavy
breathing again.
I have to walk early in the morning, before my brain figures out what
I’m doing..
I joined a health club last year, spent about 400 bucks. Haven’t lost
a pound. Apparently you have to go there.
Every time I hear the dirty word ‘exercise’, I wash my mouth out with
chocolate.
I do have flabby thighs, but fortunately my stomach covers them.
The advantage of exercising every day is so when you die, they’ll say,
‘Well, she looks good doesn’t she.’
If you are going to try cross-country skiing, start with a small
country.
I know I got a lot of exercise the last few years,…… just getting
over the hill.
You could run this over to your friends but why not just e-mail it to
them!
We all get heavier as we get older, because there’s a lot more
information in our heads. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Every time I start thinking too much about how I look, I just find a
Happy Hour and by the time I leave, I look just fine.
lynn difley
Hi Carolyn and thanks for your comment. I know it must be hard for you, it is so tough when you have physical limitations and have to fight, but your health is worth it. I am very proud of you for losing weight, it’s very hard when you can’t exercise vigorously. you are doing a good thing by getting in water, exercise in water can be very intense and burn lots of calories, but there is no impact so the drawbacks of joint sensitivity are diminished. I love teaching my water ex classes, all of us can go back to a time when we could run, leap and dance with abandon. Keep up the good work, walk when you can, walk in water or swim when you can, ride a bike if you can, just keep moving, even if you have to divide the half an hour into 10 minute manageable segments, promise yourself you will give it your best effort, and I know you will be happy with the results. Keep me posted, yours, Lynn
Carolyn
I know all of that, but.t.t.t…..I have such a hard time making walking a daily or even every other day priority but I should. I am in remission from several extremely rough years of lupus and many of those years on large doses of prednisone and the extra weight that happened thru medication and sedentary lifestyle. I have arthritis of one knee and both hips and pain begins after a short walk…I walk best pushing a cart in Walmart and will walk every aisle.
We have been fulltimers for 2 1/2 years now and I find it too easy to sit with my laptop,read a book or sit at a craft table, than get up and go walk. I do swim when we have a pool available which works well. I have finally lost 25 pounds and need to lose another 50….it’s a struggle keeping the lost from getting found again. Your writing encourages and I need more of that. Thank you!