Walk More - Live Longer!

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Did you know that you can live longer just by walking more?

Let’s talk about one of the most important elements of cultivating a healthy lifestyle: movement!

We’ve talked about exercise on this blog before. Exercise is a key component for health—it improves strength of the heart and reduces blood pressure & atherosclerosis risk, it strengthens muscles and bones, it improves metabolism, sleep, digestion, mood, and so much more. Exercise is so beneficial to health that it promotes longevity in individuals who exercise frequently.

Now, the type of exercise you engage in completely depends on preference. There is no “one size fits all” for exercise, and there’s no one “best” type of exercise. Diet culture places things like running and HIIT on a pedestal because these are the forms of exercise believed to help you lose weight the quickest and stay thin. While high intensity exercise certainly carries its benefits, it is not essential to improving your health. In other words, you don’t need to engage in intense exercise every day to reap the benefits of movement.

The hardest part about weight loss/maintaining weight with exercise is that many of us force ourselves into intense exercise. Many of us dislike running and other forms of high intensity exercise, and those that are older and more subject to injury may find it difficult to maintain a frequent regimen of high intensity exercise. Disliking the form of movement you choose makes it more difficult to keep it up, so many fall into the trap of working out too intensely, or not working out at all.

Something we need to start to normalize is that movement should be a part of your everyday, but it should also be fun! Your daily movement should be something you enjoy, whether it be high or low intensity. The easiest way to move your body is to walk. Walking can take the form of high or low intensity exercise depending on speed and environment, but either way walking provides the same benefits we discussed with general exercise.

A study recently published in the JAMA Network Open revealed that walking can decrease all-cause mortality by up to 70%. The study followed over 2,000 middle-aged Black & white men & women over a 10-year period. Individuals were encouraged to increase their step volume (or the amount they walked) to at least 7,000 steps per day. At the 10-year follow-up, the scientists found that those individuals who maintained high volume walking regimens were 50-70% healthier and were projected to live longer than those who walked below 7,000 steps per day. What’s more, the scientists found that walking intensity was not associated with this health outcome, meaning that the amount and frequency one walked was more important than how fast or slow.

This study supports what more healthcare professionals are emphasizing these days: that it is not about the intensity of your movement, but how often you are able to move and how active your lifestyle is. The more movement you can factor into your day, the better you will feel and the healthier your body in the long run.

How can you increase your movement volume? What if you have a busy schedule?

This is where you can get creative with movement. For some people, scheduling a time to move works best for them. Maybe an early morning barre class is the answer, or maybe you like boxing in the afternoon. Maybe it’s scheduling time to workout with a friend. For others with more busy schedules, transitioning sitting opportunities to moving opportunities is more feasible than finding time to work out. For example, a 10-minute break in between meetings can be used for a short walk. Calls where you only have to listen in can also be taken while walking; you can even ask your in-person colleagues to take a walking meeting if the meeting is small. Maybe the walk occurs during your lunch break. Or maybe you walk around your indoor space for a little while just to move your body. There are so many ways to increase your movement throughout the day, but it’s all about finding what works best for you and your lifestyle.

The key takeaway from the study is that moving more can help you feel better & live longer. That’s some great motivation to get up and move today!

What’s your favorite way to move?

By Jessica Kaplan

For more information on the JAMA study, click here.

Abigail Rapaport
Abigail Rapaport, MS, RD, is a practicing dietitian & food and nutrition consultant who provides nutrition counseling and healthy lifestyle services to her clients.
www.abigailnutrition.com
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