Walking for Exercise Benefits [Ultimate Guide]

Walking for exercise is a powerful, brisk walk specifically designed for the purpose of improving health. Learn how walking for exercise benefits your health.

It is one of the best and cheapest forms of exercise. If you want to improve your general health and keep fit, or if you want to reduce your weight, walking is a good place to start. Walking for exercise benefits are plenty.

Walking keeps you fit and helps you take off extra weight and keep it off. It’s cheap, it’s simple and almost anybody can do it.

Walking has a multitude of health benefits for everyone.

Walking helps reduce the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke, lowers high blood pressure, helps reduce weight and body fat, helps reduce risk of some cancers, gives you more energy, helps you sleep better, helps you look better and helps those people who are recovering from a period of ill-health.

Walking for exercise does not need to be strenuous to produce results.

Even walking for exercise benefits 30 minutes a day has been reported to produce measurable benefits, even among those who are least active.

If you want to feel great, have more energy and improve your overall health, take a walk.

Walking is one of the best forms of exercise and you can do it almost anywhere, anytime, and for free. Do at least 30 minutes of exercise, like brisk walking, most days of the week.

The idea is to use up more calories than you eat. You need to use up the day’s calories and some of the calories stored in your body fat.

Along with its benefits to the heart, walking improves circulation, helps breathing, combats depression, bolsters the immune system, helps prevent osteoporosis, helps control weight and helps prevent and control diabetes.

It’s a gentle exercise and it’s suitable if you are recovering from heart trouble, a stroke or other illness.

It helps the total circulation of blood throughout the body, and thus has a direct effect on your overall feeling of health. Walking for exercise benefits your entire body.

Remember, if you have a medical condition, are overweight, over 40 years of age or haven’t exercised regularly for a long time, check with your doctor before you start any type of exercise program.

Your doctor or other health worker can help you set sensible goals based on a proper weight for your height, build and age.

People who walk daily have a lesser incidence of cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and other killer diseases.

Not only does walking make you healthier but it also burns calories, creates psychological wellbeing, increases metabolism, strengthens muscles, increases flexibility, improves respiratory function and helps concentration and memory. 

This should give you plenty of reasons to try and walk a little each and every day.  Besides that, simple physical inactivity is one of the leading causes of ill health. 

Walking not only benefits you but it also benefits the Earth. 

By learning to walk rather than driving a car you are doing your part to help the environment by not releasing toxins into the air, which hurts the long-term stability of the planet.

A short four-mile trip you take walking keeps about fifteen pounds of pollutants out of the air we breathe. Walking for exercise benefits the environment.

Walking also saves you money on gas and other expenses associated with your vehicle.

Every time you start your car it costs you about five cents considering current gas prices. Needless to say driving anywhere adds to this enormously.

Yet, most people still use their vehicles to make short trips, which could easily be made by walking.

If you can even make the simple choice to walk once a week when you would normally drive you will go a long way toward making a difference both in your pocket book as well as in your life.

Walking is also a stress reducer. Stress has been proven to contribute more than any other factor to the reduction of longevity. Walking can help reduce that stress and increase your longevity. 

One of the primary reasons people decide to walk is to lose pounds. 

There are some simple formulas you can use to determine how many calories are being burned according to your weight and how fast you are walking.

How Much Should you Walk to Lose Weight?

3.0 miles/hour (20-minute mile): Burns .027 calories/pound/minute.

3.5 miles/hour (17 minute mile): Burns .033 calories/pound/minute.

4.0 miles/hour (15 minute mile): Burns .042 calories/pound/minute.

4.5 miles/hour (13 minute mile): Burns .047 calories/pound/minute.

Take the number of calories/pound/minute you burn and multiply it by your weight and then by the number of minutes you walk.

For example, if you weigh 150 pounds and walk a 20-minute mile for 60 minutes, you multiply 150 by .027, then multiple the result (4.5) by 60. You burn 270 calories.

It is important that when you do walk that you walk at a moderate pace. Walking will do you no good if it is so leisurely that you exert no effort.

A good walk should leave you moderately perspired. This ensures that you are working at an ideal intensity.

Walking is a habit like anything else.  If you can create a habit of walking everyday it will contribute to a new and healthy you in the long term.

Running, jogging, weight lifting, calisthenics.  

These are all good for keeping in shape but walking for exercise benefits is still the most simple, and effective, of all exercises to lose weight and stay in shape and maintain good health.

Approximately 67 million Americans of all ages walk for exercise regularly.

Walking can be done with friends or alone.  And it can be performed outside or inside.

Walking helps the metabolic system to control weight, regulate blood sugar, and cholesterol levels.

A brisk walk burns up to 100 calories per mile.

In an ideal world you’d be able to eat all you wanted, do as little exercise as you felt like and move around just by flicking a switch.

And if you chose to sit in front of the TV all day stuffing yourself with cakes and ice creams, it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to the way you looked or how you felt.

In an ideal world, you wouldn’t have to worry about your lifestyle. You’d look and feel great all the time.

Meanwhile, in the real world, huge numbers of adults and children are obese or overweight.

According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Sciences, heart disease kills nearly one million people every year.

There are many reasons for this. The time spent watching TV is just one. Working for long periods at a computer and an increasing reliance on the car are others.

And if, like many, you know you’re not as active as you should be, you may come out in a cold sweat every time the dreaded word ‘exercise’ is mentioned.

But here’s the thing, you don’t need to worry. There is an activity you know only too well that offers the perfect solution to being unfit. It’s called walking!   

Just imagine for a moment what the ideal fitness plan would look like:

1             It would be easy to do and enjoyable for its own sake

2              It would provide a wide range of health benefits like:

                – Reducing the risks of heart disease, diabetes and minor illnesses

                – Controlling or reducing your weight

                – Reducing your blood pressure

                – Reducing your risk of injury

                – Reducing stress and improving your sleep

                – Improving your posture

3              It would be cheap and wouldn’t involve the purchase of lots of equipment

4              It would be flexible enough to adapt to the time you have

            available

5              It would put you in control of your body and your life.

Walking is ALL of the above. It’s the IDEAL solution to the problem of inactivity.

It can be your solution.

You can stop your body going into further decline just by walking a bit more each day. All you have to do is increase the amount of walking you already do on an average day to 21 minutes (or 30 minutes over 5 days a week).

Then you need to do it regularly, making it part of your daily routine.

And that’s all it takes to achieve a basic level of fitness!

The wonderful thing about walking for exercise benefits is that you can do it anywhere: at home, in the gym, in your local neighborhood or, for the more adventurous, in the great outdoors.

And it’s all FREE.

You were made for walking. Make it what you do best and make your body your best friend!

In the real world, walking can get you fit. It’s the ideal way to survive fitness.

So what are you waiting for? Get walking … !

Walking is an aerobic exercise meaning that it uses oxygen.

A brisk walk increases oxygen intake to the blood,strengthens the heart, improves circulation and lowers blood pressure.

For people with poor circulation in the arms and legs,walking can help to increase the size and improve the efficiency of the tiny blood vessels that supply blood to the cells.

Walking slows development of all forms of arthritis,degenerative joint disease, stops loss of bone mass in osteoporosis, and tones the muscles.

Walking helps recovery from back pain. For women walking reduces premenstrual and pain during periods.

Regular walking also relieves and prevents constipation. Psychologically, walking generates an overall feeling of well-being because it produces endorphins, a natural tranquilizer. This aids in relief of depression, anxiety, and stress.

To get the most benefit from walking, 30 minutes of walking must be done at a brisk pace without stopping.   Gradually increase time to 40 to 60 minutes for each session.

Always stretch muscles and warm up before walking.

Wear walking or running shoes that fit snugly but not too tight, support the arch and lift the heel slightly. 

Replace your walking shoes every 6 months or 600 miles, whichever comes first.

In hot, cold and inclement weather consider getting a treadmill for walking indoors.

Take advantage of walking for exercise benefits today. Just start with one step.

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