Most of us who have a pair or healthy normal legs, so we never bother about the health benefits of walking. Just because we are blessed with the ability to walk since birth, we assume we will always have a pair of healthy legs to take us around where we want until the day we die. Most of the time we never even bother to look at our legs.
Stop and think for a moment. We all can lose the ability to walk or worst, to lose our pair of legs because accident, sickness or disease. Today when you can still walk around, please appreciate the benefits of walking. Can you imagine if you are a cripple, a legless person or the guy sitting in a wheelchair for life. Don’t you feel grateful that you have a pair of healthy legs which can take you anywhere? Or you can walk, dance, skip, jump, twist, run and hop with them.
I am already in my fifties and I have always feel thankful that I can still walk anywhere I want with my pair of reasonably healthy pair of legs.
“In youth we learned; in age we understand.” – Marie Eber von Eschenbach
Let me share with you another one of those important life lessons, that is to be grateful for what you have. If you have the chance to grow older, you will understand why one should always be thankful. There are many who don’t have the opportunity to grow old enough to understand and enjoy life to the fullest.
So while you still can walk about with your pair of legs, please do appreciate the benefits of walking or to be more precise the health benefits of walking daily.
Walking is a form of safe and easy exercise for everybody. You can do it alone or accompany with good friends or family members. As I have said, walking has many health benefits.
Benefits of Walking As Exercise
It can help you to improve fitness, manage your weight, improve your daily mood, sleep better, strengthen your heart, alleviate symptoms of depression, lower your blood pressure and “bad” cholesterol or low-density lipoprotein (LDL), raise the “good” cholesterol aka high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and even reduce the risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart attack.
You don’t need to stress yourself. Just brisk walk will do. Brisk walking pace is most recommended by doctors, health experts and walking coaches. For a brisk pace, it means you should be able to talk while walking, but not able
to sing. For those of you who cannot talk, as you walk, then you better slow down a bit. And for those who can sing, you can walk a bit faster.
Just put on a pair of comfortable walking shoes and loose fitting clothes. Start off slow and easy. Walk slowly to warm up your muscles. Then only you can increase your pace to brisk walking.
Don’t treat walking as an exercise that you have to do every day. Make it fun. You can walk alone, or get your spouse, friend to join you.
The other thing is vary your walking routine. Don’t always stick to the same route or the same time. It gets monotonous and you feel like walking like a chore.
Benefits of Walking 30 Minutes a Day
It is true that you can manage your weight by walking 30 minutes a day or 10,000 steps a day. According to a study, they found that 30 minutes of walking a day adds an average of 1.3 healthy years to your life.
Walking is a low-intensity workout. It helps to burn carbohydrates first, and then fat in your body. So for those of you who want to lose weight and build muscle, then brisk walking is better than jogging or doing aerobic activity.
Calories Burned by Walking
It is said calories burned by walking will depend on one’s weight, height, body frame, speed at which one walks, time frame and the distance one covers. In fact there is no difference between calories burned walking than running.
If you one of those sedentary people, then you should start off by walking for health benefits. I know that running and jogging are great exercises for burning calories, but for those who haven’t been exercising for some time now, you may find them to be too energy demanding and they may even do more harm then good.
Now you know the benefits of walking everyday. So, put on your pair of walking shoes and walk your way to a healthy new you.