Six key health benefits of walking

Depending on your current fitness level, a fast paced walk might just get you sweating and raise the heart rate too.

As you start to find a fast walk easy you can increase the distance or speed and if you’re feeling daring both, switch between high and moderate intensity, decrease the ‘recovery periods’, and find hills/steps to climb.

If you want to know how many steps you are doing a day get a pedometer (step counter). The NHS suggests we should aim to take more than 10,000 steps a day to see health benefits. However on average people only take 4,000, so a pedometer could help see how many you take.

So my six key benefits of walking are;

• Developing stronger bones: Walking has far less pressure on your joints than running, and can reduce the risk of osteoporosis by increasing bone mineral density.
• Healthy heart: High blood pressure and high cholesterol are proven to be reduced by walking regularly
• Controls weight: Depending on the intensity and the fitness level for the person a little aerobic walk can get you sweating and raise your heart rate
• Clears the mind: The psychological benefits of a long walk are great, it can help clear a mind full of stress and worry, reduce depression and even improve the quality of sleep
• Energises the body: Walking is a great way to promote oxygen to flow around your body, reducing muscle tension and stiffness.
• Tones up your muscles: A hill-walk every day can really bring shapely definition to the calves, quads, even glutes. Increasing the pace will bring in the hamstrings, hip flexors, and buttocks.

The Dreaded Diet

Lets face it, dieting is hell! I don’t know anyone who actually enjoys dieting or, who doesn’t find it a real struggle (me included). So instead of being on & off a ridiculous regime, I have discovered a more attainable way to eat healthily, get great changes from your body, without going through the pain of a diet!

My first point, everyone responds differently to foods so my opinion in this blog is a generalisation however, you will get plenty of mileage from this advice.

So lets get started with the basics. You must first of all recognise what foods are causing you great damage. High sugars, high saturated fats and the biggest criminal of them all are trans or hydrogenated fats!

Look carefully on the back of the packet at what you’re eating and if the sugar content is high then remove it. If the saturated fat is high then also remove it, unless, its olive oil, coconut oil or butter. Some of these oils will clearly say no trans or hydrogenated fats. If they don’t, then find one. Unfortunately, with fats, there is no legal obligation for companies to display their use of trans or hydrogenation however, some companies take pride to advertise the fact they don’t, thus, these fats are safe to use.

 

Remaining vigilant on what high concentrations of sugars and fats are in your existing diet allows you to make better choices of the same things with fewer repercussions. So if you want chocolate, look for chocolate that is primarily made from cacao and cacao butter, The Naked cacao bars are a great substitute (don’t worry I’m not on commission) so give them a try.

If you want sugar in cooking or coffee then use Agave nectar, its completely natural, its 25% less sugar than normal sugar and its 50% sweeter so you don’t need as much. And it doesn’t contain any of the nasty industrial cleaning ingredients like aspartame, which, is found in most sweeteners.

Get rid of cooking sauces and start blending your own herbs and spices mixed with olive oil. You will be amazed at how great your own homemade blends can taste, even better than off-the-shelf pastes and sauces. A little experimentation is needed her but, trust me, by going on to you tube and looking how to make your own healthy pastes and sauces you will have gorgeous meals every day, and, you will be eating meals that are healthy for you.

If you want snacks then simply have a couple of pieces of your favourite fruit every day or a couple of rice cakes with peanut butter or almond butter and a tiny speck of Agave nectar, a delicious way to keep you going between meals.

  

Once you put this into practise you will notice a dramatic difference in your body regardless of your goals. Not to mention all the amazing health benefits for eating this way. You will no longer have to endure a diet again for the rest of your life but enjoy the great results some diets can produce.

So, if this has inspired you then go and get started today! And, also share this with all your friends and family. Pass on the good message of healthy eating the delicious way!

Keep healthy

Lewis