The Undisputed Magic Of Walking

When You Can’t Do Anything Else, Walk

Of all the advice on health and fitness, the most underprescribed is simply walking. The simplest action that can be taken for physical activity is the easiest to accomplish, and the benefits are almost endless. I would guess that most fitfluencers don’t spend time talking about walking because 1) it is impossible to monetize and 2) it seems too mundane to spend time talking about. Everyone has to walk in their life to some degree, even if it is just getting from the bed to the couch to the car and then back again.

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However, walking is easily the physical activity that has provided the most benefits for me. To begin with, your body suffers almost no wear and tear from walking. Consider the eccentric movements of running, jogging, biking, or any other form of more physically demanding cardiovascular exercise. When you get home from a run, you are dead tired. The day after running (keeping in mind I am not very good), I am guaranteed to be sore. I also can’t really run a tremendous distance. A five-mile run would be a huge win for me, and I would probably burn something like a maximum of 600 calories. Let us be generous and say that I can go on a five-mile run twice per week, giving me a maximum of 1,200 calories burned, which is not even half a pound of body weight worth of kinetic energy.

Compare that to a three-mile walk. That should take about 60 minutes, give or take, and my heart rate will never be higher than 105, even if I go through some hills. My knees and hips will not suffer any wear or tear, and I can respond to some emails and take my aging dog with me. That length of walk should burn between 300 and 350 active calories, and if I repeat that daily each week, that is an additional 2,500-ish calories per week, which is over a half pound of body weight expended. Again, all of that sounds pretty minimal, but if you were to take approximately a three-mile walk per day, you would be burning a load of consistent calories over the course of your week, month, and year. Nothing else in my life is as easy as going on a walk, and nothing comes close to supplying the caloric burn per perceived energy expended. The beautiful part is that you can pretty much take that walk every single day. Rather than becoming harder because you are tired, walking is going to become easier as you get slightly fitter.

None of this is to mention the cardiovascular benefits of walking. As I age, I realize that weight loss/physique should not only be the goals I am targeting, but I have to do the work to keep my body healthy at a metabolic level. Honestly, I do not like running or most endurance-based exercise. A game of pick-up basketball or skateboarding is more likely to draw me in but isn’t always available and will carry the cost of making me sore for the rest of the day (as an old). Getting your blood pumping and your heart working once or twice daily is common sense. We know that we shouldn’t sit on our couches or at our desks all day; walking is the easiest way to break that chain. I literally get up and go out the door of my house, and I’m doing it. That’s all.

Perhaps the best benefit of walking outdoors is the exposure to sunlight. Yes, I am burning some calories when I walk outside, and getting steps in is very important to maintaining heart and metabolic health. But for what other reasons will I get sunlight on a normal day? I wake up before the sun most days to go to the gym and work from my desk. I’m positive there have been entire days in my adult life where I have not been outside in the sunlight for more than five or ten minutes. That is a disaster for mental and physical health! Sunlight releases serotonin in our brain, helps us maintain our ancient Circadian rhythm (vastly improving our sleep), and gives our bodies the Vitamin D that they need for almost all of our cells. All of this can be accomplished while simply taking a stroll around the block at a casual pace.

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If you take anything away from subscribing to this newsletter or listening to/watching any of my content, I hope that it is to start taking walks. You can take your dog, your kids, your spouse, or, if you are just a huge degenerate like me, your phone to do 5+ best ball drafts at once. I have started to look forward to my evening walk with my dog as one of the best parts of my day. The benefits of burning calories, exposure to sunlight, and asking my heart to do some extra work have compounding benefits. It is the easiest thing you can do for yourself.