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Walking your way to Fitness

It’s so simple and convenient that it couldn’t possibly count as exercise, right?  Wrong.  Study after study shows that regular moderate walking can help you lose weight and reduce your risk of heart disease.

In a study published in “Diabetes Research in Clinical Practice”, Japanese researchers tested obese men before and after they joined a one-year modest walking plan.  All they did was increase the number of steps they took during their daily activities.  The result: their blood pressure and cholesterol levels improved and the amount of body fat around their abdomen – the dangerous kind that leads to higher rates of heart disease and diabetes – significantly decreased.

For walking to count as exercise you need to walk five days a week for 30 minutes.

Listening to music or even an “e” book while you walk takes your mind off the actual walk and making it easier to achieve.

Most people walk around 5000 steps per day without participating in any sport or exercise.

Using a pedometer, find your normal baseline of how many steps you take in a normal day.  Then, increase that amount by at least 200 steps a day until you reach 10000 or 12500 daily steps.

(10000 is considered “active” while 12500 earns you the title of “highly active”)