24 Ways to Move More. Nicole Tsong

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      The more I walked, the more I realized how often I had been choosing not to walk. Generally, I drove my car, choosing efficiency—or maybe speed? In the evening, I chilled on my couch, which calls my name at the end of a long day as a place to rest, zone out, and unwind. Plus, it’s just sitting there in my living room.

      Before I discovered walking as a way to move my body every day, I was proud of how active I thought I was, from yoga to lifting weights to trying new fitness classes. I moved my body for up to two hours daily, far more than most.

      Then I read Katy Bowman’s book Move Your DNA and was promptly toppled from my “I’m so active” high horse. I was exercising, but I wasn’t moving the rest of my day, and I definitely wasn’t walking much. My step count typically hovered around 3,000 to 6,000 a day, or roughly 2.5 miles, hardly a number to hoot about.

      FITNESS DEVICES

      I’ve tried a lot of fitness devices, from trackers to fitness apps. I wanted to know what information they would show me about how much I moved—or didn’t move. I also was curious if tracking my physical activity with a fancy gadget would motivate me to move more. My conclusions: Yes to tracking. No to expensive fitness gadgets.

      I check my step count daily. My baseline for walking is 10,000 steps a day. I like knowing if I’ve reached that minimum every day. I’ve found my phone provides all the info I want, which is how many steps I walk daily. I use a free app that tells me how many times I hit 10,000 steps in a week, month, or year. My phone also keeps information on flights of stairs, but I don’t pay much attention to that data. It will track steps even on airplane mode or when I’m carrying it in a bag. The main drawback is I have to have my phone with me, but 90 percent of the time that is already true.

      I’ve also tried gadgets that track not only steps but also a lot of other information while I’m engaged in an activity, and I’ve briefly been enthralled by a few over the years. Trackers can tell you exact mileage via GPS, show your heart rate, note your current ultraviolet exposure, and calculate how many calories you’ve burned, and many even come with the added convenience of buzzing when you receive texts. I’ve worn trackers overnight to assess sleeping patterns. For brief periods, I’ve worn them for the express purpose of being able to read texts on the device on my wrist instead of picking up my phone.

      But, inevitably, all my trackers went by the wayside, some because I grew tired of them and stopped using them, and some due to lack of durability.

      Trackers are most useful for runners, who like to know mileage and pace. But for someone like me, who just wants to know how far I’ve walked in a day, my phone has all the data I could ever want.

      Bowman says 10,000 steps is the baseline needed to sustain a healthy body. A study in the International Journal of Obesity shows postal workers who walked 15,000 steps a day had no heightened risk for heart disease. Desk workers, however, added risk for heart disease for every hour beyond five that they sat in a day.

      Other studies show if you walk briskly for an hour a day, it cuts the effect of obesitypromoting genes in half. It also reduces the risk of developing breast cancer, and it not only reduces arthritis-related pain but it can even prevent arthritis from forming in the first place by strengthening and lubricating joints like your knees and hips. Walking is shown to improve memory and brain function and helps maintain bone density. Walking also helps your immune system. A study of people who walked at least 20 minutes a day five days a week for 12 weeks took 43 percent fewer sick days than those who exercised once a week or less.

      The statistics made me want to leap up out of my chair. From Wayne Curtis’s book The Last Great Walk, I learned that Paleolithic humans likely walked 8 to 12 miles a day, four to six times the distance the average American walks now. Curtis’s book follows the journey of the “last great pedestrian,” Edward Payson Weston, who at age 70, walked from New York to San Francisco in 1909. Did you catch that? He was 70 years old. He walked across the entire country!

      In between snippets detailing Weston’s considerable challenges from weather to footwear to walk 60 miles a day, Curtis digs into the evolution of how humans began to walk, why we walk, and what it does to our bodies and minds. We evolved to walk long distances, and our genetic makeup, locked in thousands of years ago, is based on walking. But in the United States, we are walking less than ever. Not walking “is one of the most radical things we’ve ever decided to do,” Curtis writes.

      Not walking also could be unwise. One study found that walking briskly for 30 minutes five times a week reduced the risk of dying prematurely by 20 percent.

      Do I have your attention?

      The more I learned about walking, the more I felt compelled to walk. Time to get moving.

      Squeezing in 10,000 steps, or roughly 4 to 4.5 miles, requires dedicated time to walk. I made it my starting goal. Going out for a walk, even a short one, nets a couple thousand steps, but I also love yoga and lifting weights. I had to figure out how to walk more without taking away time from those.

      I needed to get smart about adding in steps.

      I looked first at my commute. Hopping on transit was the simplest approach. The 10- to 15-minute walk to my local light-rail station after parking, plus the 10-minute walk from my downtown stop to the yoga studio where I teach and the return walks, would net me 4,000 to 5,000 steps.

      I argued with myself to get this new system in place. I was accustomed to curling up over my computer screen right up until the moment I had to hop in my car. I had to build in more time on the front end, since my new plan added about 30 minutes to my commute. It appeared at first that this was going to eat up valuable work time.

      The reality was quite different. I saw that I could shift my mindset about taking the train and turn it into productive work time. During my 25-minute ride, I completed writing projects and answered emails; I realized I lost time sitting in my car in traffic. By using transit, I also arrived at my destination with more energy from walking and no stress from traffic. Taking the train also fed into an environmental goal to drive fewer miles.

      Soon, I loved my new pattern.

      From there, I added in more walks. One day, I walked three miles to an appointment. When I ran out of time for the return, I took the bus. That day, I hit 15,000 steps. On another day, I walked one mile from the light-rail to my gym, did Olympic weightlifting for two hours, and walked another mile afterward back to the station. In the rain. It proved to me I could walk on days I lift or do yoga—and while getting soaked.

      I walked while making work calls. If I was 10 minutes early to an appointment, I walked around the block instead of sitting in my car on my phone. I proposed walks with friends СКАЧАТЬ