Yeah, we have all heard it before. We need more exercise. Well truthfully, when I think of exercise, I think of how exhausted I can get from getting up from the sofa and going to the kitchen to make myself a ham sandwich. Now thinking about a stair master at the gym. There is not even a jelly donut at the top floor for my reward.
Seriously though, exercise is not always all about just going to the gym and putting in 7 hours in with Biff the 6’ Greek God from hell. Sure, if you are training to be some huge movie star and need a six pack of abs and super toned muscles, because of the role, then that is where you would need to be. But if you are like most of us, you will find that simple exercises will keep you slimmed down and in pretty good shape.
When I think of simple, not in the gym exercise, one of the biggest things that comes to my mind, as I see a lot of these days, are runners. Truthfully I have never been a big runner. I remember when I was 17 years old, I could run a mile in about six minutes. I did it that fast, not because I wanted to be,but because I hated running so much. I was in the military at the time and we would have to run two miles on a daily basis. So the faster you ran, the sooner you could be done with it.
Well what we are finding out today is that running is not really one of the best solutions for helping the body. Some of the big problems that you “run” into (pardon the pun) is that you can seriously damage your legs, spine, knees, etc. So an average couch potato may end up doing more harm then good if they decided to start a running regiment.
For this case, I fall back to walking! Yes walking. I know, it sounds crazy right? Believe it or not, scientists are now starting to show that people that walk about 10,000 steps a day (whoa – sounds like a lot right?) can actually burn up to two (2) pounds of weight a month! Yeah, imagine losing 24 pounds a year and not having to go on a diet. “Wow, I can lose weight and not have to give up that ham sandwich? This is sounding better and better!”
I know, you are thinking “10,000 steps? How am I going to be able to walk that far?” Here is something that aught to make you smile. Walking about 10,000 steps is approximately about an hours worth of walking. Now it’s not sounding so bad huh? Well it gets better. That one hour, you don’t have to do it all at once. This means you can start by walking to the closest McDonald’s from your office to get your lunch or walk to the school to pick the kids up and then walk them to the ice cream store for a little treat of doing so well at keeping up with your 10,000 steps. No, no… I am only kidding. To help us lose the two extra pounds a month we should try not to consume more calories then we are already taking in. That would kind of defeat the point.
All right – so we now know that walking one hour a day can really do us some good. Oh, I forgot to tell you the best part. You only have to do it four (4) days a week. Yup, that’s it. So you can start it on Tuesday and finish on Friday. That will give you Sat – Mon to sit around and relax. Or you can save it up for the weekend and use your steps to walk around to the local garage sales or flea markets. Remember, just four hours of extra walking a week can make that much of a difference.
All right – now, with this all in mind, it must be mentioned if you are pretty out of shape or you have medical difficulties, it is very important to check with your doctor before doing this. Also, I would suggest that you invest in a great pair of walking or running shoes. Trust me, when I say that investing a few dollars for a great pair of shoes will help to keep your joints and spine protected. The money you spend now will be a wonderful investment to the money you will save on medical expenses in the future.
Very interesting. You write very well. Is there an RSS feed?